recovered memory essay

The Return of Recovered Memory

The most distinguished female psychologist of the 20th century—whose pioneering research discredited the “archival” model of human memory and established our understanding of memories as malleable rather than fixed—was canceled in 2020. Elizabeth Loftus had appeared before a Manhattan court to describe “the misinformation effect” and the ease with which false memories can be implanted “in the minds of otherwise ordinary, healthy people”—concepts that typify her body of research, hardly news to her colleagues at the University of California, Irvine, or her peers in the National Academy of Sciences. But this time, she had spoken as a witness for the defense in The People of New York v. Harvey Weinstein . A scheduled talk at the New York University psychology department was called off. A colleague at Irvine demanded, “Harvey Weinstein—how could you?” Irvine law students generated a petition decrying Loftus’s efforts “to further traumatize and disenfranchize survivors” and demanding that the administration “address the acute problem of Elizabeth Loftus.” The New Yorker observe d that, however authoritative, Loftus’s body of research “collides with our traumatic moment.”

“The memory wars seemed to have concluded with the victory of the skeptics.”

It wasn’t the first time Loftus had challenged a politically privileged account of traumatic memory. In the 1990s, she was a leading figure in the long-fought “memory wars” that pitted psychiatrists and accused parents on one side against clinicians and victims’ advocates on the other. The two camps contested the validity of “repressed” and “recovered” memories of trauma, especially those elicited in sessions of evocative psychotherapy. Launched in the early 1980s and fought in the popular media and the courts, featuring national panics and scandals as well as thousands of unpublicized battles, the memory wars seemed to have concluded with the victory of the skeptics, such that Johns Hopkins psychiatry chief Paul McHugh could write in 2003, “The repressed-memory diagnosis has finally been repressed.”

Nearly 20 years later, the repressed has returned. #MeToo has touched off pop-scientific discussions of the nature of traumatic memory, most notably during legal and pseudo-legal proceedings against Weinstein and Brett Kavanaugh; if one is to #BelieveWomen, affirming the validity of recovered memory turns out to be quite necessary. Preceding #MeToo by a few months, The Keepers , an acclaimed true-crime documentary on Netflix, anticipated the way in which old accounts of traumatic memory were to comport with new feminist cultural theses. Bessel van der Kolk, an influential theorist of recovered memory, appeared last fall on The Ezra Klein Show to receive praise for his perennially popular 2014 book (still No. 1 on the New York Times paperback nonfiction list as of this writing) on the psychological and physiological effects of repressed traumatic memories. Most important, in the everyday work of legions of American psychologists and social workers, the practice of recovered-memory therapy has quietly persisted.

Frederick Crews, an ex-Freudian literary critic who in the mid-1990s assailed recovered memory in a celebrated series of essays for the New York Review of Books , has observed these developments closely. “Looking back with chagrin,” he tells me, “we can see that the flame of recovered memory was suppressed, not extinguished.” The therapy’s academic, clinical, and institutional persistence had hardly been touched by the victories of the skeptics in high-profile contests. This persistence has eroded the skeptics’ success in the legal arena, and in the news and entertainment media the popular tropes of traumatic-memory mythology retain their appeal. Fabulous tales of sadistic conspiratorial abuse, and the esoteric psychodynamics that supposedly conceal and then reveal them, have found a new audience—an upscale, high-information, politically conscientious audience.

Recovered memory has once again met with a congenial sociopolitical moment. This moment is different from that of the early 1980s. Then, affirmations of recovered memory might and did comport with most any cultural politics; today, we are observing recovered memory’s ideological purification. What the capaciousness of the earlier movement concealed, today’s narrowing makes clear: There is always ideology at work in valorizations of traumatic memory. For rhetoric, clinical practice, and legal contention have all urged the exemption of this class of memory from ordinary standards of what is probative, plausible, or even possible. As Harvard psychiatry professor Judith Herman urged before the American Psychiatry Association in 1994, the practitioner of recovered memory therapy makes belief, rather than an inquiry after truth, his business in the determination of right and wrong.

The prehistory of the memory wars begins in 1893-95, with Freud’s formulation, application, and rejection of his “seduction theory.” On this theory, the psychological symptoms of his mostly female, mostly bourgeois patients were the result of the psyche’s labor in repressing consciousness of incestuous abuse sustained in early childhood. Famously—soon enough infamously—Freud discarded seduction theory, having found it unprovable and clinically useless. He resorted to its subtler cognate, the theory of infantile sexuality, according to which all our ills arise from the repression of urges that conflict with society (such as the urge to commit incest with one’s parents). As Philip Rieff was to observe, much the same cultural polemic is encoded in both theories: Both partake of “that dualist tradition which pits human nature against social order.”

Accordingly, many mental-health practitioners trained in the orthodox Freudianism of infantile sexuality switched easily to an updated version of his seduction theory in the late 20th century. The distinctive diagnosis of the 1970s was multiple personality disorder, understood as the splitting of the psyche into “alters” as a defense against traumatic memory. The theory of MPD received clinical application in certain psychiatric wards and gained popular legitimacy through best-selling books, such as Flora Rheta Schreiber’s Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities (1973), and the television film based on it (1976).

Attention shifted in the 1980s to evocative psychotherapy, the technique used to recover these pathogenic memories. Again, the decade’s emphasis was heralded by a best-seller: Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith’s Michelle Remembers (1980), the purportedly true story of the physical and sexual abuse Smith had endured during Satanic rituals, memory of which she had repressed, then recovered with the aid of hypnosis. The practice of evocative psychotherapy became widespread during the 1980s, in part because it requires no serious training or certification, unlike the arcana of orthodox Freudian analysis. And it accords with the cultural politics of the type of person likely to become a therapist or a social worker: romantically left-tending, suspicious of society and the family as a conspiracy against the authentic and vulnerable (feminine or child) self.

This complex of attitudes was clarified in 1984 by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, renegade archivist of the Freud papers, who argued in The Assault on Truth that Freud had suppressed the seduction theory not because it had failed, but because he had found it all too true: It entailed the exposure of powerful men whose support he required. Freud thereby betrayed generations of women, whose traumas go unrecognized even by themselves. Masson’s argument, panned by orthodox Freudians but eagerly received by many feminists, demonstrated the anti-patriarchal polemic inherent in seduction theory and its 20th-century iterations. Four years later, the self-help best-seller The Courage To Heal , coauthored by two feminists untrained in psychology or any related field, taught thousands of women how to be sex-abuse victims. Lacking consciousness of abuse was no impediment. “You may think you don’t have memories,” Ellen Bass and Laura Davis assured their readers, “but often as you begin to talk about what you do remember, there emerges a constellation of feelings, reactions, and recollections that add up.” The Courage To Heal would go through many printings and editions and incite untold incest allegations.

“No catacombs were ever discovered, no wizards’ robes, no pornographic photos.”

The Courage To Heal launched the recovered-memory movement as a true mass movement. But by the year of The Courage To Heal ’s first run, a counter-movement had begun to form. The McMartin Preschool case, begun in 1983, was falling apart by the end of the decade; the testimony of its many alleged victims, obtained through leading interviews and suggestive therapy, was proving impossible to substantiate. Dozens of children alleged that a “ring” of adults had subjected them to sexual abuse in the course of magic rituals conducted in secret tunnels beneath the preschool (or in secret rooms to which the children were delivered by being flushed down the toilet, or at nearby carwashes or airports, or in out-of-state national parks reached by hot-air balloon). The McMartin case thus established the template for daycare and Satanic ritual-abuse panics. But no catacombs were ever discovered, no wizards’ robes, no pornographic photos. McMartin and its several copycat cases attracted initial credulous attention from newspapers and television shows; then, as the dizzying numbers of charges against dizzying numbers of defendants were dropped, it tended to the discrediting of all such cases. What Ross Cheit, a professor of political science, calls “the witch-hunt narrative” emerged as the popular take, banishing “We believe the children.”

This shift in the narrative didn’t prevent recovered-memory therapy from being practiced in therapists’ offices across America. But it did give skeptics a chance to be heard. Accused parents formed the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, an advocacy group that by the end of the 1990s would receive requests for aid from more than 25,000 American families. The FMSF empaneled a board of memory experts, including Loftus, McHugh, Crews, and Harvard psychiatrist Richard McNally. In one criminal case after another, expert witnesses dispatched by the FMSF challenged the admissibility of uncorroborated recovered memories.

In 1996, the skeptics won a so-called Daubert ruling in New Hampshire v. Hungerford , according to which defense attorneys may demand a pretrial hearing concerning the scientific validity of recovered memories for any criminal case based solely on recovered memories. (Today, federal courts and most states operate under the Daubert standard for admissibility of expert witness testimony, such as that on behalf of recovered memory; a few states, such as California, Pennsylvania, and Washington, retain the older and looser Frye standard. The validity of recovered memory is more easily challenged in Daubert states than in Frye states.) Short of a ruling that all such evidence was always inadmissible, this was as much as skeptics could hope for. The outcome, combined with another development in the civil courts—the success of several multimillion-dollar lawsuits against therapists and hospitals by recovered-memory “retractors”—allowed the skeptics to declare victory in the memory wars. Their experts had prevailed in the courts of law and the court of public opinion, and they expected that their achievements would be transferable to other arenas. “It seemed reasonable to infer that the psychotherapeutic profession had learned a permanent lesson,” Crews tells me. “We critics of the movement assumed that recovered memory would soon be a thing of the past.”

Were the memory wars a culture war? Not in any simple sense. Despite the feminist polemic implicit in seduction theory and articulated by lay leaders of the recovered-memory movement, one could not, in the 1980s and ’90s, expect affirmers of recovered memory to be leftists or liberals and skeptics to be traditionalists or conservatives. For cultural conservatives could find much to love in recovered-memory hysteria. Lurid suspicion of daycare centers could be taken to vindicate reservations concerning women working outside the home and retaining professional assistance in child-rearing. Fantasies of Satanist conspiracies were, in part, the revenge of a threatened Christian cosmos. Sentimental rhetorics of childhood innocence bespoke a refusal of the dominion of eros. Indeed, one recent account, that of n+1 editor Richard Beck, describes the entire daycare and ritual-abuse craze as the Reaganite right’s backlash against the sexual revolution. But this is so partial as to be absurd. As Kay Hymowitz notes in a review of Beck’s book for The New York Times , feminists were drivers of the recovered-memory movement, supporting even its “conservative” manifestations: “Gloria Steinem donated to the McMartin investigation, and Ms. magazine ran a 1993 cover article, ‘BELIEVE IT! Cult Ritual Abuse Exists.’” And in its more pervasive and durable emphasis on incest, the recovered-memory movement proposed an anti-patriarchal account of the family as a structure of oppression and exploitation, and of male sexuality as malignant, the source of all psychological and social ills.

“Cultural conservatives could find much to love in recovered-memory hysteria.”

Beck wasn’t wrong, however, to document recovered memory’s conservative inflection. The memory wars of the 1980s and ’90s were not politically polarizing, because left and right could assimilate the recovered-memory movement to their separate critiques of American society. Skepticism was likewise bipartisan: Debbie Nathan, writing in The Village Voice , was at the forefront of skepticism of the McMartin allegations. Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote influentially in Harper ’s in defense of Kelly Michaels, convicted in 1988 of the sexual abuse of 20 preschoolers, and in The Wall Street Journal in defense of the Amirault family, convicted in 1986 of the sexual abuse of eight children in their daycare center. (Michaels’s conviction was overturned in 1993; the convictions of Violet and Cheryl Amirault were overturned in 1995; Gerald Amirault, denied a commutation in 2002 by Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift, was released on parole in 2004.)

The bipartisan appeal of recovered memory broadened its constituency. It allowed this rather esoteric psychiatric thesis to break through as a byword and idiom for distress, the diagnosis of first resort, for thousands of therapists and millions of patients. Recovered memory demanded credence even where its claims were incredible, as demonstrated by the evidence-optional daycare hysterias and the unfalsifiable dogmas concerning traumatic memory. As the psychiatrist Roland Summit proposed in his seminal paper, “The Child Sexual Abuse Accommodation Syndrome” (1983), a victim’s accusation of abuse was to be considered confirmation of abuse; her denial of abuse was likewise confirmation of abuse; her retraction of her accusation was no less confirmation of abuse. Recovered memory’s factual contentions were exempted from standards of facticity. In other words, it enjoyed the privileges of an ideology.

Though the 1980s established that recovered memory can be useful to the cultural right, contemporary developments show, what a consideration of its antecedents would suggest, that it is more durably and structurally congenial to the cultural left. The ideological purification of the recovered-memory project both narrows its appeal and sharpens it. The movement today is smaller, but it has a clearer direction.

In accounting for the persistence of recovered memory in the therapeutic and legal arenas, Crews points to the failure (or refusal) of the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association to enforce “scientific standards for the practice of psychotherapy.” He also cites “canny attorneys” who “coach their witnesses not to reveal” the provenance of their recovered memories and thus forestall Daubert hearings or scrutiny at trial. Another legal maneuver cuts just the other way, thanks to incentives created by mental-health or recovered-memory exceptions to statutes of limitations for sexual abuse. In jurisdictions in which the statute of limitations is tolled until an accuser becomes capable of remembering the abuse, presenting a memory as recovered allows an accuser to bring a claim that would otherwise be barred. (Skeptics of recovered memory most often contend with pseudo-memories that are artifacts of therapy; the tolling of statutes of limitations can equally incentivize the false claim that a true memory is an artifact of therapy.)

A version of this operation appears in recent litigation between Gareld Duane Rollins and Paul Pressler, a former Texas judge and a leader of the “conservative resurgence” in the Southern Baptist Convention in the 1980s. In a late-developing extension of #MeToo, the SBC has been roiled by claims of ministerial sexual abuse and coverups. (The alleged victims are typically female, though all of Pressler’s several accusers are male.) Rollins’s civil suit against Pressler was dismissed in 2018 due to Texas’s five-year statute of limitations on sexual-abuse claims; it was revived this April under the state’s “unsound-mind” exception. Due to trauma and manipulation by Pressler, we are told , Rollins endured a 35-year “period of incapacity” until 2015, at which time, with the help of therapists, he recovered his repressed memories of abuse dating to 1980. Since Rollins reported the abuse promptly upon his recovery of his faculties, argue his lawyers, he should be understood to have complied with the statute of limitations. On April 1, the Texas Supreme Court agreed and returned the case to district court. Setting aside the truth or falsity of this or any other allegation against Pressler, Rollins’s case demonstrates the usefulness of recovered memory in rendering old claims justiciable.

In addition to retaining or gaining support among America’s therapists and trial lawyers, recovered memory has recently gained new political salience. The first clear sign was The Keepers , a Netflix series that succeeded in making the memory wars a topic of conversation on the internet in the summer of 2017, on terms favorable to recovered memory.

Proffered by the streaming service as part of the wave of “prestige” true-crime documentaries, The Keepers is in many ways a millennial text. But it also recalls the sensational presentation of ritual-abuse cases by television news magazines during the early 1980s. The matter is familiar: Alumnae of a Catholic girls’ high school in 1960s Baltimore claim to have been violated in extravagant ways by authority figures (several priests and religious brothers, police officers, a gynecologist). Religious paraphernalia are props during episodes of abuse. The tale gets wackier with the claim of the documentary’s star, the most prolific accuser, Jean Hargadon Wehner, to have been shown the corpse of a murdered nun who taught at the school—a warning of what happened to tattletales. Wehner recovered the memory of Sister Cathy’s corpse during a meditation session, the source of all her memories of abuse at the school. The documentary’s efforts to pin the murder of Sister Cathy on a deceased priest named Father Maskell (or on someone, anyone, who might be even tenuously connected with him) are torturous and bizarre. More pertinent is the documentary’s account of “the Science.”

The documentary proposes that Wehner and her classmates were victims of bad timing, as the mid-1990s, when they began to lodge their complaints, were uniquely hostile to recovered-memory claims. The arguments of recovered-memory skeptics don’t receive a hearing. McHugh, whose testimony helped prevent a civil suit connected with the charges from proceeding to trial in 1994, is presented sinisterly through archival footage as “Mr. Catholic Psychiatrist,” a tool of the archdiocese. Over screenshots of a research paper and a Guardian article, Yale psychiatrist L. M. Lothstein proclaims: “We now know so much more about memory. It’s scientifically accepted that memories can be compartmentalized and not known to the conscious ego.” The late A. W. Richard Sipe, junior colleague of McHugh on the faculty of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, provides the more revealing quote: “I believed [Wehner]. There are things that have the ring of truth, even if they’re hard to believe. And she was believable to me.” With Sipe’s three variants of “believe” in as many sentences, The Keepers concedes the true grounds of its credence. The “ring of truth” evidently does not entail non-contradiction, traditionally an attribute of truthful statements. But the theory of recovered memory entails an ambitious account of self and society; it will not pass up an occasion to call for vindication of the repressed and oppressed.

The documentary’s treatment of “the Science” proved persuasive to millennial journalists who don’t remember the memory wars and who sense their ideological interest in this matter. Kaleigh Rogers, writing for Vice , reported on the results of her Google search: “Since [the mid-1990s], the science has become more clear. Some experts now say false memory syndrome, the condition where someone remembers something that never happened, isn’t really a thing, or at least, it’s very rare.” Notable are Rogers’s glibness as she pretends to mastery of a contested body of science, and her failure to distinguish between “some experts” and a scientific consensus. Mark Pendergrast, a veteran of the memory wars, wrote in response: “I fear that she is representative of a new generation who will be vulnerable to these dangerous theories.”

”We are again in a historical moment like the early 1980s.“

Within months of its release, The Keepers had been appropriated as a #MeToo document. In The Atlantic , Sophie Gilbert proposed that the documentary had “anticipated the Weinstein Moment”: Among other things, it “revealed how single reports of abuse and assault can have a domino effect, encouraging countless more women who’ve lived silently with their own experiences to speak out.” The critical, commercial, and cultural success of The Keepers indicates that we are again in a historical moment like the early 1980s, when popular media are eager to credit recovered-memory claims, indeed to obey and propagate the affirmers’ demand that they be accorded special deference. In a striking reversal of the skeptics’ achievement in the 1990s, the “witch-hunt narrative” seems to have been succeeded by the witch hunt proper.

In Memory Warp: How the Myth of Repressed Memory Arose and Refuses To Die (2017), Pendergrast warns that though “the high-profile daycare hysteria cases … are no longer making headlines, unpublicized cases of false allegations of sexual abuse ruin lives every day.” He adduces a small sampling of hundreds of pleas submitted recently to the National Center for Reason and Justice, a nonprofit that facilitates financial and legal assistance for those who may be unjustly accused or wrongfully convicted. But since Pendergrast’s book went to press, two high-profile sex-abuse cases have emerged: the 2020 trial of Harvey Weinstein and the 2018 “trial” of Brett Kavanaugh. These iconic cases of the #MeToo movement demonstrate the ideological complexion of the new campaign on behalf of old dogmas about traumatic memory.

Weinstein’s trial on five counts of criminal sexual acts gave rise to a rhetoric about survivors’ memories that insists on their accuracy and indelibility, even (or especially) once they have been “enhanced” by therapy. One supporting witness, Tarale Wulff, had presented memories of victimization by Weinstein that were so confused as to be useless to the prosecution. The problem was rectified by Wulff’s 50-odd visits to a psychologist (disparaged by the defense as a “memory doctor”). Might Wulff’s memories have been manipulated during these sessions toward the outcome desired by the prosecution? Loftus was retained as an expert witness. News that the defense had lined up a veteran of the memory wars to contest the operations of traumatic memory elicited pushback from the #MeToo movement. An essay by two trauma psychologists, published by The Conversation , condemned the defense gambit for its dated science (“The notion of false memories has its roots in the 1990s”) and its cruelty (“These assertions … invalidate survivors and keep them from receiving the support they deserve”). Elle published a review of “rape myths,” which reproached Loftus for her claim that “memories fade.” The Time’s Up Foundation, the leading institutional home of #MeToo, warned of “The Danger Behind the ‘False-Memory’ Myth” and insisted on the indelibility of traumatic memory: “Most scientific research shows traumatic events of all kinds are often cemented in a person’s memory. And current research shows that memories of sexual assault are even more vivid than memories of other sorts of traumas.”

Time’s Up rightly calculates that the indelibility of traumatic memory is crucial to the recovered-memory thesis. For unlike continuous memories, which are sustained and refurbished (and modified, to a greater or lesser degree) by recurrence, traumatic memories need to remain accurate and reliable even as they lie untouched for years or decades. Recovered memory accordingly holds that traumatic memories get “locked in,” as Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford put it in her Senate hearing, so that they are not gone even when they are forgotten. Blasey Ford, a professor of psychology, didn’t claim to have recovered her memory of Kavanaugh’s alleged assault—but it is a distinct possibility, given that the memory appears to have emerged in a therapeutic context. Blasey Ford once co-authored a paper commending the use of recovered memory therapy, and she explained to the Senate the indelibility of traumatic memory in biochemical terms: “Just the level of norepinephrine and epinephrin in the brain that sort of, as you know, encodes that neurotransmitter, encodes memories into the hippocampus. And so the trauma-related experience then is kind of locked there, whereas other details kind of drift.” Blasey Ford’s attempt to invoke the authority of science led her to utter the unforgettable line: “Indelible in the hippocampus is the laughter.” Around the internet, Blasey Ford’s vintage-1990 psychobabble was hyped as “ the science behind ” her story, establishing as gospel truth what otherwise would have been open to doubt.

If The Keepers suggested that we had entered a cultural moment not unlike the early 1980s, confirmation was provided by the Kavanaugh and Weinstein cases, in which the guilt and innocence of living parties was in question. In both cases, we observe the mobilization of woke rhetorics of belief: On the one hand, science vindicates credence in claims of traumatic memory; on the other hand, belief in such claims is simply a moral imperative.

The dubious presentation of Blasey Ford as an ingenue evokes one irony of the recovered-memory movement and of #MeToo: While purporting to empower women, these movements portray them as eternal victims, lacking agency, ignorant even of the content of their minds. They infantilize those they claim to champion. The slogan of the 1980s was “We believe the children,” but that category was best understood as comprising women and children, or women-as-children and children. Today, children are scarcely more prominent as victims than men are. #BelieveWomen circumscribes the concerns of the affirmers of recovered memory no less than the concerns of #MeToo at large. This narrowing of concern coincides with the absence of the cultural conservative side of the memory wars.

“While purporting to empower women, these movements portray them as eternal victims”

Judith Herman’s 1994 lecture to the American Psychiatry Association upon receiving its Guttmacher Award for forensic achievements amounts to a precocious articulation of woke doctrine on sex-abuse claims. “The therapist’s role,” says Herman, “is not to act as a detective, jury, or judge, not to extract confessions or impose interpretations on the patient’s experience, but rather to bear witness as the patient discovers her own truth.” Is the patient’s “own truth” distinct from what the world would recognize as truth? The therapist is not to ask. “When after careful reflection our patients make the decision to speak publicly and seek justice, we will be called upon to stand with them. … I hope we will accept the honor of bearing witness and stand with them.” The therapist, being neither detective, nor jury, nor judge, will bracket facts as she supports her patient’s search for “justice.”

The purification of the recovered-memory coalition therefore involves not just the defection of cultural conservatives, but a fracture, increasingly evident in various arenas since the agitations of 2020, between liberals and the woke. It polarizes those who prize truth, and the procedural norms established for its determination, from those who take their justice straight; those who seek evidence from those who self-generate it; those who would require corroboration of a recovered memory from those who accord such memories more than ordinary probative value.

The first memory wars began with aggression on the part of the affirmers; the skeptics took some years to rouse themselves. In this new round of hostilities, there is so far no organized resistance. The skeptics, after all, have disarmed. The FMSF is now nothing more than a Facebook page. Its disbanding was celebrated in 2021 by a long essay in The Cut , which heaped scorn on recovered-memory skeptics and valorized their longtime critics. Crews lauds the continued efforts of Loftus, McNally, and Pendergrast but wonders “how many members of the public have even heard of them?” in comparison with viral artifacts such as The Keepers .

In retrospect, it seems that though the skeptics won on three fronts in the 1990s—in the battle of the experts, in the criminal and civil courts, and in the media—they somehow still lost the memory wars. Their opponents enjoy two long-term advantages: They have retained the footsoldiers (the psychologists and social workers); and they have the better story. The recovered-memory myth partakes of what Rieff called “the triumph of the therapeutic.” It proposes that inside each of us is something esoteric, a truth that requires expression and affirmation if we are to become healed and whole. You cannot fact-check a myth, contain it with procedural norms, or chasten it with the scorn of elites; only another myth will do. At a time when many on the right and left propose to counter wokeness on sex or race with facts, procedure, or polemical élan, the return of recovered memory should serve as a warning.

Get the best of Compact right in your inbox.

Bipolar Disorder
Therapy Center
When To See a Therapist
Types of Therapy
Best Online Therapy
Best Couples Therapy
Best Family Therapy
Managing Stress
Sleep and Dreaming
Understanding Emotions
Self-Improvement
Healthy Relationships
Student Resources
Personality Types
Guided Meditations
Verywell Mind Insights
2023 Verywell Mind 25
Mental Health in the Classroom
Editorial Process
Meet Our Review Board
Crisis Support

The Debate Over Repressed and Recovered Memories

How memory works.

Shaheen Lakhan, MD, PhD, is an award-winning physician-scientist and clinical development specialist.

Jan Hakan Dahlstrom / Getty Images

Forgotten Trauma
Debate Over Memories

There is still a fairly heated controversy in the field of psychology about whether or not repressed memories can or should be recovered, as well as whether or not they are accurate. The clearest divide appears to be between mental health practitioners and researchers.

In one study, clinicians had a much greater tendency to believe that people repress memories that can be recovered in therapy than the researchers did. The general public, too, has a belief in repressed memory. Clearly, more research is needed in the area of memory.

Trauma Can Be Forgotten

Most people remember the bad things that happen to them, but sometimes extreme trauma is forgotten. Scientists are studying this, and we are beginning to understand how this occurs.

When this forgetting becomes extreme, a dissociative disorder sometimes develops, such as dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue, depersonalization disorder, and dissociative identity disorder . These disorders and their relationship to trauma are still being studied.

Memory is not like a tape recorder. The brain processes information and stores it in different ways. Most of us have had some mildly traumatic experiences, and these experiences sometimes seem to be burned into our brains with a high degree of detail.

Scientists are studying the relationship between two parts of the brain , the amygdala and the hippocampus , to understand why this is. Here's what we know at this time:

Moderate trauma can enhance long-term memory . This is the common-sense experience that most of us have, and it makes it difficult to understand how the memory of horrible events can be forgotten.
Extreme trauma can disrupt long-term storage and leave memories stored as emotions or sensations rather than as memories. Research suggests that it can take up to several days to fully store an event in long-term memory.
Sensory triggers in the present can cause forgotten material to surface. This is because the material is associated with the trigger through a process known as "state-dependent memory, learning, and behavior."
"False memories" of mildly traumatic events have been created in the laboratory. It is unclear to what extent this occurs in other settings.
Studies have documented that people who live through extreme trauma sometimes forget the trauma. The memory of the trauma can return later in life, usually beginning in the form of sensations or emotions, sometimes involving " flashbacks " during which the person feels like they are reliving the memory. This material gradually becomes more integrated until it resembles other memories.

Debate Over Recovered Memories

Are recovered memories necessarily true? There is much debate surrounding this question. Some therapists who work with trauma survivors believe that the memories are true because they are accompanied by such extreme emotions.

Other therapists have reported that some of their patients have recovered memories that could not have been true (a memory of being decapitated, for example). Some groups have claimed that therapists are "implanting memories" or causing false memories in vulnerable patients by suggesting that they are victims of abuse when no abuse occurred.

Some therapists do seem to have persuaded patients that their symptoms were due to abuse when they did not know this to be true. This was never considered good therapeutic practice, and most therapists are careful not to suggest a cause for a symptom unless the patient reports the cause.

There is some research suggesting that false memories for mild trauma can be created in the laboratory. In one study, suggestions were made that children had been lost in a shopping mall. Many of the children later came to believe that this was a real memory. It is important to note that it is not ethical to suggest memories of severe trauma in a laboratory setting.

Patihis L, Ho LY, Tingen IW, Lilienfeld SO, Loftus EF. Are the "memory wars" over? A scientist-practitioner gap in beliefs about repressed memory . Psychol Sci . 2014;25(2):519–530. doi:10.1177/0956797613510718

National Alliance on Mental Illness. Dissociative disorders .

van Marle H. PTSD as a memory disorder . Eur J Psychotraumatol . 2015;6:10.3402/ejpt.v6.27633. doi:10.3402/ejpt.v6.27633

Davis RL, Zhong Y. The biology of forgetting: A perspective . Neuron . 2017;95(3):490–503. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2017.05.039

Radulovic J, Lee R, Ortony A. State-dependent memory: Neurobiological advances and prospects for translation to dissociative amnesia . Front Behav Neurosci . 2018;12:259. doi:10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00259

Strange D, Takarangi MK. False memories for missing aspects of traumatic events . Acta Psychol (Amst) . 2012;141(3):322–326. doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2012.08.005

Brewin CR. Memory and forgetting . Curr Psychiatry Rep . 2018;20(10):87. doi:10.1007/s11920-018-0950-7

Crook LS, McEwen LE. Deconstructing the lost in the mall study . J Child Custody . 2019;16(1):719, doi:10.1080/15379418.2019.1601603

APS. Scientists and Practitioners Don't See Eye to Eye on Repressed Memory .

International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation. Dissociation FAQs .

By Leonard Holmes, PhD Leonard Holmes, PhD, is a pioneer of the online therapy field and a clinical psychologist specializing in chronic pain and anxiety.

What about Recovered Memories?

Jennifer j. freyd, phd, professor emerit of psychology, university of oregon.

Founder and President, Center for Institutional Courage

Short Definition

Sivers, Schooler, and Freyd (2002, p 169) define recovered memory as: The recollection of a memory that is perceived to have been unavailable for some period of time.

New 2020 Section (Update 2022): History and Current Status of the So-Called "False/Recovered Memory Controversy"

As I explain in the section below on conceptual tangles, from a scientific perspective the dichotomy between false and recovered memories is itself false. That is, these are conceptually two separate issues that boil down to whether memories can be inaccurate and whether memories can be inaccessible and later accessible to conscious recall. (The answer to both questions is of course yes.). Not only are these conceptually distinct, importantly the empirical evidence does not support a strong empirical relationship between these two ways memory can fail us. This is discussed in the section below on common conceptual confusions.

While questions of recovered memories and false memories are scientifically distinct, they are often quite entangled politically and rhetorically. For instance, the "False Memory Syndrome Foundation" was focused on recovered memories. One of many articles that discuss the way politics enter the scientific discourse here, and particularly the gendered nature of the discourse is:

Stoler, L., Quina, K., DePrince, A.P &. Freyd, J. J. (2001). Recovered memories . In J. Worrell (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Women and Gende r, Volume Two. (pp 905-917) San Diego, California and London: Academic Press.

I had a unique position relative to this debate and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Readers interested in learning more about my experiences can read the Afterword of Betrayal Trauma (Freyd, 1996) . Even more about my experiences can be found in several chapters of Blind to Betrayal (Freyd & Birrell, 2013) .

A new development as of 31 December 2019 is that the False Memory Syndrome Foundation has been dissolved. A preliminary report about this can be found here: https://themighty.com/2019/12/false-memory-syndrome-foundation-folds/

I also comment on the significance of the dissolution in a twitter thread that has been unrolled here.

In January 2020 two articles relevant to the history and politics of this issue were published:

The Rise and Fall of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation by Kate McMaugh & Warwick Middleton, ISSTD News , 21 January 2020.
Harvey Weinstein’s ‘false memory’ defense is not backed by science by Anne DePrince and Joan Cook, The Conversation , 30 January 2020.

In 2022 two volumes were published that offer retrospective analyses of the false memory movement.

Trauma and Memory: The Science and the Silenced , Edited By Valerie Sinason and Ashley Conway, 2022, Routledge.
The science and politics of false memories. A Special Issue of the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation , Guest Editors: Michael Salter and Ruth Blizard, Volume 23 Number 2, March–April 2022

Some important historical documents are also available on the APSAC website -- these are the articles published in 1997 Volume of Child Maltreatment , with commentary regarding a famous case and the more recent the 2014 Journal of Interpersonal Violence special issue with commentaries about the related case of Taus v. Loftus . Go to http://www.apsac.org/apsac-publications and scroll down to right below "APSAC position papers". I have also archived the links here .

Recommended Web Sites about Recovered Memories Research

There are a lot of web sites on this topic. Quality varies. Here are three web pages I have found particularly useful regarding research about recovered memories. (Each of these sites has links to more sites. Also see more links at the end of this page.)

The Recovered Memory Project (by Professor Ross Cheit, Brown University)
Memories of Child Abuse: Some Scholarly Research and Resources (by Dr Jim Hopper, the Trauma Center)
The Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence

Recovered Memory: Context and Controversy

If you forget where you left your keys, and then later remember the location, you have just recovered a memory. This experience is fairly common and not very controversial (but even so, psychologists still debate how and why it happens). However, usually in everyday language people use the term "recovered memory" to refer to memory for something traumatic, such as remembering being abused as a child and feeling you had not remembered this for a long time. The issues around these sorts of recovered memories are complex and controversial. This is true both in the sense that the psychology is complex (how and why does it happen) and it is true in the emotional, political, legal, and societal sense when people question whether the memories are accurate.

The charged controversy about recovered memories of abuse can sometimes make it is difficult to think clearly and difficult to get accurate information. Of course, the most charged issue of all is whether a recovered memory of abuse is true or accurate. If you think about the situation in which you temporarily cannot remember where you left your keys, you probably can remember times when you later remembered the location (and later remembered putting those keys in a special place) and you were accurate (a true recovered memory), and other times when you thought you remembered the location but you were wrong because the keys were actually somewhere else (a mistaken recovered memory). There were probably other times you thought you remembered your key location all along, but when you checked the place you were sure you left your keys they were not there (a mistaken continuous memory). Finally, and fortunately, sometimes you thought you remembered the location of your keys all along, and you checked the location and they were there just as you remembered (a true continuous memory). The possibilities of true or mistaken, and recovered and continuous memory, don't seem so remarkable when it comes to memory for keys. But when it comes to memory for abuse, the issues can get confusing. One big difference between memory for key location and abuse is that we can almost always check our memory against reality when it comes to key location, but evidence for prior abuse is much harder to agree about. Another important difference is that usually a lost and found memory for key location does not inspire disagreement with other people, whereas a lost and found abuse memory has a high probability of inspiring serious conflict.

Is this web page balanced? Sometimes when people write about recovered memories they claim that their own viewpoint is balanced. Often each author or researcher thinks his or her position is balanced and that other (different) viewpoints are extreme. (It would be fairly strange if you heard someone say "my own position is an extreme and unbalanced one.") For this reason I like to say "Balance is in the eye of the beholder." In this case you are the beholder.

My goal with this web page is to offer a few tools for thinking about recovered memories for abuse and to give you some pointers for getting more information. My own research is not so much on recovered memories per se, but rather it is focused on betrayal trauma theory, which does attempt to explain aspects of recovered memories along with other kinds of not-knowing and unawareness. The recovered memory and false memory controversy has often seemed to me like an annoying distraction from my main research focus. Yet I have felt at times that I must address the issues in order to dispel confusion that might otherwise interfere with the ability of my readers or audience members to attend to my main focus. For more on that main focus, betrayal trauma theory, I hope you will visit my web page "What is betrayal trauma? What is betrayal trauma theory?" at http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/defineBT.html.

Some papers my colleagues and I have written that focus on the issues of recovered memories and the ethics in the science surrounding the topic are listed here (abstracts and ordering information can be found at: http://pages.uoregon.edu/dynamic/jjf/traumapapers.html .) My books also have sections on this issue.

Freyd, Jennifer J., and David H. Gleaves (1996). "Remembering" Words Not Presented in Lists: Relevance to the Current Recovered/False Memory Controversy. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 1996 Vol. 22 (3), 811-813.
Freyd, J.J. (1996). The science of memory: Apply with caution . Traumatic StressPoints , 10 (4), 1, 8.
Gleaves, D. H. & Freyd, J.J. (1997) Questioning additional claims about the "false memory syndrome" epidemic. [commentary] American Psychologist, 52 993-994.
DePrince, A.P. and Freyd, J.J. (1997) So What is the Dispute About? The Judges' Journal: A Quarterly of the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association. 36 (3), 70-72.
Freyd, J. J. (1998) Science in the Memory Debate . Ethics & Behavior, 8 (2), 101-113.
DePrince, A.P. & Freyd, J.J. (1999) Review of Truth in Memory (Lynn & McConkey, Eds.) American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, 41 , 281-283.
Freyd, J. J. & Quina, K. (2000) Feminist ethics in the practice of science: The contested memory controversy as an example. In M. Brabeck (Ed) Practicing Feminist Ethics in Psychology (pp. 101-124). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
Sivers, H., Schooler, J. , Freyd, J. J. (2002) Recovered memories . In V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.) Encyclopedia of the Human Brain, Volume 4 . (pp 169-184). San Diego, California and London: Academic Press.
DePrince, A.P., Allard, C.B., Oh, H., & Freyd, J.J. (2004). What's in a name for memory errors? Implications and ethical issues arising from the use of the label "false memory" for errors in memory for details. Ethics & Behavior, 14 , 201-233.
Freyd, J.J., Putnam, F.W., Lyon, T.D., Becker-Blease, K. A., Cheit, R.E., Siegel, N.B., & Pezdek, K. (2005). The problem of child sex abuse [ Response to Letters ]. Science , 309 , 1183-1185.
Middleton, W. Cromer, L. & Freyd, J.J. (2005). Remembering the past: Anticipating a future . Australasian Psychiatry , 13 (3), 223-233.
Cromer, L.D. & Freyd, J.J. (2007) What influences believing abuse reports? The roles of depicted memory persistence, participant gender, trauma history, and sexism. Psychology of Women's Quarterly , 3, 13-22.
Pezdek, K. & Freyd, J.J. (2008). False memory . In C.M. Renzetti & J.L. Edleson (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Interpersonal Violence (Vol 1, pp. 236-237), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Two Common conceptual tangles about recovered memories

1. confusing phenomena, mechanisms, and motivation.

To define more precisely what we know and do not know, we must untangle the several issues involved and ask scientifically tractable questions, while remaining compassionate and aware of the high stakes involved in these issues. First, we must distinguish phenomena (what), motivations (why), and mechanisms (how). The phenomena are apparent forgetting and later remembering a significant event (or series of event). Why they occur is a question of motivation, and how they occur a question of mechanisms. A related problem is the language used. When a phrase like "repressed memories" is used, do people mean the phenomena, motivations, or purported mechanisms? It is often not clear, and sometimes the phenomena of recovered memories are discredited because one particular mechanism of "repression" is not supported by a particular research study. These issues are addressed in some detail in:

Freyd, J. J. (1996). Betrayal trauma: The logic of forgetting childhood abuse . Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

2. Conflating memory accuracy with memory persistence

Memory accuracy is the degree to which a memory is historically true. Memory persistence is the degree to which a memory has remained available over time. These are conceptually independent or distinct issues, but they have often been very mixed up in the controversy about recovered memories. The image below is intended to illustrate in a schematic way the conceptual distinction between these two dimensions of memory.

The two dimensions are conceptually distinct and not necessarily correlated - however they have often been collapsed into a single dimension. An empirical question regards the relationship between memory accuracy and memory persistence. Are unavailable memories when recalled more likely to be true or mistaken than are continuously available memories? Authors have made both claims (that recovered memories are more likely to be true or that recovered memories are more likely to be mistaken). However, the research does not clearly support either claim. For example, Dalenburg (1996) found that memories of sexual abuse were found to be as likely to be accurate whether recovered or continuously remembered. Williams (1995) investigated the memories of 129 adults whose abuse during childhood had been documented by medical professionals. She found that ``in general, the women with recovered memories had no more inconsistencies in their accounts than did the women who had always remembered" (Williams, 1995, p. 660). This issue is addressed in more detail in:

Dalenberg, C. J. (1996). Accuracy, timing and circumstances of disclosure in therapy of recovered and continuous memories of abuse. Journal of Psychiatry & Law , 24 , 229-75. Freyd, J. J. (1998) Science in the Memory Debate . Ethics & Behavior , 8 , 101-113. Williams, L. M. (1995). Recovered memories of abuse in women with documented child sexual victimization histories. Journal of Traumatic Stress , 8, 649-673.

Memory accuracy and memory persistence are themselves each complicated and challenging dimensions of memory, with long histories of research in psychology. Memories vary in degrees of accuracy and persistence; rarely are there absolutes (such as a perfectly true, completely mistaken, perfectly available, or completely unavailable memory). Memory accuracy is further complicated by the fact that historical truth -- what really happened -- usually has elements of interpretation (people often disagree about the interpretation of current events, never mind historical events), and that a memory might be extraordinarily accurate in one regard and quite inacurate in another regard. Memory persistence is complicated by the possibility that people's own introspections about memory availability may be subject to error (e.g.: one may forget that something that had in fact been previously remembered; or one may overestimate the availability of memory in hindsight). Memory persistence is also complicated by the fact that memory itself is a function of many separate sub-systems so that, for instance, we can fail to have conscious recall of an event but show through our behavior that we have learned from that particular situation. Please see Sivers, Schooler, and Freyd (2002) and Freyd (1996) for more on the cognitive psychology of memory. Additional material is presented in Freyd, DePrince, and Gleaves(2007) and DePrince et al (2012) .

Recovered memory in Russia

Is recovered memory observed in countries without the media exposure and awareness of ideas such as dissociation and recovered memory? Palesh and Dalenberg (2006; Dalenberg & Palesh, 2004) investigated recovered memory and dissociation in a sample of Russian college students. Publically available information on child abuse, dissociation, or dissociative amnesia is not readily available in Russia. The exposure of Russian students to published information about child abuse, dissociation, and recovered memory is very limited compared to exposure for North American students. Nonetheless Palesh and Dalenberg report rates of dissociation and memory disturbance for traumatized students in the Russian sample that are higher than in most US college student samples. These findings "support the argument that dissociation is not a culture-specific phenomenon, created by zealous American/British therapists or an abuse-obsessed media, but instead may be a universal occurrence." (Palesh, 2002, p 2.)

Dalenberg, C. J., & Palesh, O. G. (2004). Relationship between child abuse history, trauma, and dissociation in Russian college students. Child Abuse & Neglect , 28 , 461-474. Palesh, O. G. and C. J. Dalenberg (2006). Recovered memory and amnesia in Russian college students. College students: mental health and coping strategies. Pages 153-165. In M. V. Landow (Ed), College students: mental health and coping strategies . Nova Science Publishers. Palesh, O.G. (2002) The study of dissociation in Russia: Considerations for the international researcher. ISSD News . 20 (6), 2-3.

A word of caution: individual cases deserve individual consideration

Sometimes it is tempting to apply research findings to individual situations. There are indeed ways we can use research findings to better understand our experiences and confusing situations. However, it is important to realize that research findings usually are at best revealing general trends and probabilities and may not apply well to a given situation. For instance, research on lung cancer has revealed that smoking increases the risk. This may be an important fact to consider when deciding whether to smoke, or in investigating a case of lung cancer. However we wouldn't want to claim that someone who smokes necessarily will get lung cancer, nor even that someone who smokes and has lung cancer necessarily would not have had lung cancer without the smoking. Although the relationship between smoking and lung cancer is strong it is not absolute. Similarly, in the case of recovered memories we may be able to gain a lot of insight and understanding from research, but no matter how much we learn from research, "individual cases of contested memories will continue to deserve open-minded individual scrutiny" (Freyd, 1994, p 324).

Freyd, J.J. (1994). Betrayal-trauma: Traumatic amnesia as an adaptive response to childhood abuse . Ethics & Behavior, 4 , 307-329.

Why do people forget and remember? How do people forget and remember?

How and why would anyone forget something so seemingly significant as childhood molestation and then remember it decades later? The encyclopedia articles cited at the beginning of this article review various motivations for and mechanisms for recovered memories of abuse. The author's attempt to answer these questions inspired Betrayal Trauma theory. For more on this please see my web page: " What is a Betrayal Trauma? What is Betrayal Trauma Theory."

Are demands for silence a factor in not remembering?

Explicit and implicit demands for silence (see Veldhuis & Freyd, 1999, cited at What is DARVO ?) may lead to a complete failure to even discuss an experience. Experiences that have never been shared with anyone else may have a different internal structure than shared experiences (see What is Shareability? ).

What about gender and recovered memory?

Gender has been a significant issue in the recovered memory debate all along. Two sources of information about gender and recovered memory that I recommend are:

Rivera, M. (Ed.) (1999), Fragment by Fragment: Feminist Perspectives on Memory and Child Sexual Abuse. Charlottetown, PEI Canada: Gynergy Books. Stoler, L., Quina, K., DePrince, A.P &. Freyd, J. J. (2001) Recovered memories . In J. Worrell (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Women and Gender , Volume Two. (pp 905-917) San Diego, California and London: Academic Press.

It appears that men experience more non-betrayal traumas than do women, while women experience more betrayal traumas than do men. (Goldberg & Freyd, 2006; Klest, Freyd, & Foynes, 2013). Women may seem to have more recovered memories of abuse because they may have more experiences with the sorts of events that lead to forgetting. (DePrince & Freyd, 2002)

DePrince, A.P. & Freyd, J.J. (2002). The intersection of gender and betrayal in trauma . In R. Kimerling, P.C. Oumette, & J. Wolfe (Eds.) Gender and PTSD . (pp 98-113). New York: Guilford Press. Goldberg, LR. & Freyd, J.J. (2006). Self-reports of potentially traumatic experiences in an adult community sample: Gender differences and test-retest stabilities of the items in a Brief Betrayal-Trauma Survey . Journal of Trauma & Dissociation , 7(3), 39-63. Klest, B., Freyd, J.J., & Foynes, M.M. (2013). Trauma exposure and posttraumatic symptoms in Hawaii: Gender, ethnicity, and social context. Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy , 5 , 409-416.

How do I cite this page?

Freyd, J.J. ([Current year]). What about Recovered Memories? Retrieved [ today's date ] from https://dynamic.uoregon.edu/jjf/whatabout.html

What are some local pages related to this one?

What is a Betrayal Trauma? What is Betrayal Trauma Theory ? What is Shareability? What is DARVO? Instutional Betrayal and Institutional Courage

What do I do if I need support for myself or a loved one?

I am not a therapist myself and I am not able to answer most of the email I get, so writing to me is not likely to help. I am sorry about that. While I can make no promises about the quality of information or care anyone else provides, you might find it helpful to visit David Baldwin's Trauma Information Pages , and select the "Supportive Information" section there. The web sites listed earlier on this page are also full of links that may help you find the support you are looking for. There are also resources and links provided at the Sidran Institute and The Leadership Council on Child Abuse & Interpersonal Violence .

Change Password

Your password must have 6 characters or more:.

a lower case character,
an upper case character,
a special character

Password Changed Successfully

Your password has been changed

Create your account

Forget yout password.

Enter your email address below and we will send you the reset instructions

If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to reset your password

Forgot your Username?

Enter your email address below and we will send you your username

If the address matches an existing account you will receive an email with instructions to retrieve your username

April 01, 2024 | VOL. 181, NO. 4 CURRENT ISSUE pp.255-346
March 01, 2024 | VOL. 181, NO. 3 pp.171-254
February 01, 2024 | VOL. 181, NO. 2 pp.83-170
January 01, 2024 | VOL. 181, NO. 1 pp.1-82

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) has updated its Privacy Policy and Terms of Use , including with new information specifically addressed to individuals in the European Economic Area. As described in the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, this website utilizes cookies, including for the purpose of offering an optimal online experience and services tailored to your preferences.

Please read the entire Privacy Policy and Terms of Use. By closing this message, browsing this website, continuing the navigation, or otherwise continuing to use the APA's websites, you confirm that you understand and accept the terms of the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use, including the utilization of cookies.

The Recovered Memory Archive

Controversy.

The controversy around recovered memory focuses on whether or not recovered memories are trustworthy. Despite evidence supporting the phenomenon of recovered memories, some people believe that it is impossible to completely forget and later recover a memory. Others believe the content of recovered memories is inaccurate, or that only certain types of memories can be recovered.

Due to the traumatic nature of some recovered memories, our trust in recovered memories can greatly influence judicial cases, interpersonal relationships, and individual’s lives. Many of the people whose voice had a significant impact on the political climate surrounding recovered memory have a significant stake in this issue; such as those who’ve been accused of abuse, those who’ve recovered memories, and their families, friends, therapists, and lawyers.

Recovered memories have been a politically charged and controversial topic for many years. These pages serve to refute common false claims that undercut the validity of recovered memories. Topics such as scientific support, reliability of recovered memory, therapeutic influence, the scope of memory, and the capacity for forgetfulness are covered.

The recovered memory controversy was complex. The timeline serves to organize significant events, papers, conferences, news articles, or court cases that impacted the political climate in chronological order.

Significant People

Supporters of Recovered Memory

These pages provide a list of important figures who supported the validity of recovered memories during the controversy. Their biographies list their viewpoints, notable accomplishments, scientific contributions, and role in the debate surrounding recovered memory.

Deniers of Recovered Memory

These pages provide a list of influential deniers of recovered memory. Their biographies document their dubious views on childhood sexual abuse, highlight breaches of ethics or purposefully misconstrued arguments, and provide an overview of their role in the controversy surrounding recovered memory.

Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories Analytical Essay

Introduction, false memory syndrome, reaction to the debate.

The controversies associated with recovered repressed memories have elicited a lot debate. This has generated increased research on the said topic. This essay seeks to critically evaluate Susan Penfold’s article, The Repressed Memory Controversy: Is There a Middle Ground, a peer reviewed article.

The article seeks to identify the main issues surrounding the debate on the reliability of long-hidden recollections of childhood sexual abuse. The article explores this debate by exploring major arguments developed, hypotheses created either from medical and social science disciplines.

There have been claims that reports that recovered memories of young children who have in the past been victims of sexual abuse were as a result of repression, self-induced hypnotic trance, false memory syndrome, motivated feeling as well as other unethical methods that are employed by psychologists that are not as a result of the recovery.

The article begins on the onset of research findings those victims of supposed childhood abuse to forget about their ordeal they went through. The syndrome is characterized by the effort of psychotherapists who are criticized as being overzealous, poorly trained and eager to produce results who single-handedly seek to persuade or coerce their patients who have no memories of any form of childhood abuse to remember the alleged abuse.

The article is premised on the research by Elizabeth Loftus, a memory researcher and Richard Ofshe, a sociologist who reveal a recovered memory movement by the incompetent psychotherapists who have a practice of using coercion to entice their clients to recall past traumatic experiences.

This is achieved by employing methods such as creating visual images as well as hypnosis with the belief that it is the getaway to memory recovery. This has the effect of making the client believing that they have a history of abuse in their childhood when in reality this is not true.

Response to the false memory debate has seen the field of physical practitioners gets polarized on the argument that memories can be repressed or fabricated (Penfold, 1996, p.651).

Frankel F.H., a psychotherapist and an expert in his field, notes that a number of terms used such as amnesia, forgetting, and repression among others are used either interchangeably or as pseudonyms. Research has shown that a number of factors interfere with remembering things.

A number of factors affect the recollection of events such as the initial recording of the event, storing such information and the recalling of such a memory. Reasons for the increase of memories of abuse cannot be exhaustively explained or to explain whether repressed memories can lead to symptoms in an individual.

The core of the debate on repressed memories of sexual abuse during an individual’s childhood that have long been forgotten and the suddenly recovered leads to the conclusion that both real, genuine memories from one’s childhood as well as fabricated memories exist.

The article notes that only further research in the field will provide clear evidence and settle the debate. This debate has proved that practicing physicians need to keep an open mind when approaching patients with such sensitive issues and handle such cases with patience as well as understanding.

There is evidence of the existence of both repressed and fabricated memories but more research is required so that professionals can improve their competency in the field. However, cases of fabricated memory should not be used to mean that true memory recovery is not possible or does not exist and victims of child abuse should not shy away from seeking therapy.

Penfold, P. S. (1996). The Repressed Memory Controversy: Is There Middle Ground? British Columbia’s Children’s Hospital. Vancouver: Canadian Medical Association.

Chicago (A-D)
Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2019, October 13). Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories. https://ivypanda.com/essays/controversy-of-recovered-repressed-memories/

"Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories." IvyPanda , 13 Oct. 2019, ivypanda.com/essays/controversy-of-recovered-repressed-memories/.

IvyPanda . (2019) 'Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories'. 13 October.

IvyPanda . 2019. "Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories." October 13, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/controversy-of-recovered-repressed-memories/.

1. IvyPanda . "Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories." October 13, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/controversy-of-recovered-repressed-memories/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories." October 13, 2019. https://ivypanda.com/essays/controversy-of-recovered-repressed-memories/.

Repressed and False Recovered Memories
Repressed Memory in Childhood Experiences
Repressed Memory and Developing Teaching Strategies
True hadiths and the fabricated ones
Is the Family a Fabricated Thing?
Debate on False Recovered Memories
Psychological Theoretical Positions of Sigmund Freud
Freud and Jung Psychology
Dissociative Identity Disorder: Anna's Case
Psychoanalysis and the Adlerian Theory Comparison
Self-Regulation, Depletion, and Motivation
Critical Thinking and Actively and Skillfully Conceptualizing
How Does Cognitive Function Influence Spatial Perception During Pregnancy of the Human Species?
Reaction Paper for the Article “Thanks for the Memories”
Definition of Consciousness, Its Aspects and Affect

Psychology Discussion

Essay on memory: (meaning and types).

ADVERTISEMENTS:

Read this Comprehensive Essay on Memory: Meaning, Nature and Types of Memory !

Meaning and Nature :

Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting.

These are like two faces of a coin. Though these two are opposed to each other by nature, they play an important role in the life of an individual.

Remembering the pleasant experiences makes living happy, and on the other hand remembering unpleasant experiences makes living unhappy and miserable. So here forgetting helps individual to forget unwanted and unpleasant experiences and memories and keeps him happy.

In this way, remembering the pleasant and forgetting the- unpleasant both are essential for normal living. In the case of learners, remembering is very important, because without memory there would be no learning.

If learning has to progress, remembering of what is already learnt is indispensable, otherwise every time the learner has to start from the beginning.

The memory is defined as ‘the power to store experiences and to bring them into the field of consciousness sometime after the experience has occurred’. Our mind has the power of conserving experiences and mentally receiving them whenever such an activity helps the onward progress of the life cycle.

The conserved experience has a unity, an organisation of its own and it colours our present experience.

However, as stated above we have a notion that memory is a single process, but an analysis of it reveals involvement of three different activities- learning, retention and remembering.

This is the first stage of memory. Learning may be by any of the methods like imitation, verbal, motor, conceptual, trial and error, insight, etc. Hence, whatever may be the type of learning; we must pay our attention to retain what is learnt. A good learning is necessary for better retention.

Retention is the process of retaining in mind what is learnt or experienced in the past. The learnt material must be retained in order to make progress in our learning. Psychologists are of the opinion that the learnt material will be retained in the brain in the form of neural traces called ‘memory traces’, or ‘engrams’, or ‘neurograms’.

When good learning takes place –clear engrams are formed, so that they remain for long time and can be remembered by activation of these traces whenever necessary.

Remembering:

It is the process of bringing back the stored or retained information to the conscious level. This may be understood by activities such as recalling, recognising, relearning and reconstruction.

Recalling is the process of reproducing the past experiences that are not present. For example, recalling answers in the examination hall.

Recognising:

It is to recognise a person seen earlier, or the original items seen earlier, from among the items of the same class or category which they are mixed-up.

Relearning:

Relearning is also known as saving method. Because we measure retention in terms of saving in the number of repetition or the time required to relearn the assignment. The difference between the amount of time or trials required for original learning and the one required for relearning indicates the amount of retention.

Reconstruction:

Reconstruction is otherwise called rearrangement. Here the material to learn will be presented in a particular order and then the items will be jumbled up or shuffled thoroughly and presented to the individual to rearrange them in the original order in which it was presented.

Types of Memory :

There are five kinds of memory. These are classified on the basis of rates of decay of the information.

a. Sensory memory:

In this kind of memory, the information received by the sense organs will remain there for a very short period like few seconds. For example, the image on the screen of a TV may appear to be in our eyes for a fraction of time even when it is switched off, or the voice of a person will be tingling in our ears even after the voice is ceased.

b. Short-term memory (STM):

According to many studies, in STM the memory remains in our conscious and pre-conscious level for less than 30 seconds. Later on this will be transferred to long-term memory.

c. Long-term memory (LTM):

LTM has the unlimited capacity to store information which may remain for days, months, years or lifetime.

d. Eidetic memory:

It is otherwise called photographic memory in which the individual can remember a scene or an event in a photographic detail.

e. Episodic memory:

This is otherwise called semantic memory which is connected with episodes of events. The events are stored in the form of episodes and recalled fully in the manner of a sequence.

11 Factors that Influence Memory Process in Humans
7 Main Factors that Influence Retention Power | Memory | Psychology
Essay on Forgetting: Causes and Theories
Memory Types: 3 Main Types of Memory | Remembering | Psychology

NASA’s Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth

NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is depicted in this artist’s concept traveling through interstellar space, or the space between stars, which it entered in 2012.

After some inventive sleuthing, the mission team can — for the first time in five months — check the health and status of the most distant human-made object in existence.

For the first time since November , NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft is returning usable data about the health and status of its onboard engineering systems. The next step is to enable the spacecraft to begin returning science data again. The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars).

Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally. In March, the Voyager engineering team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California confirmed that the issue was tied to one of the spacecraft’s three onboard computers, called the flight data subsystem (FDS). The FDS is responsible for packaging the science and engineering data before it’s sent to Earth.

After receiving data about the health and status of Voyager 1 for the first time in five months, members of the Voyager flight team celebrate in a conference room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory on April 20.

The team discovered that a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory — including some of the FDS computer’s software code — isn’t working. The loss of that code rendered the science and engineering data unusable. Unable to repair the chip, the team decided to place the affected code elsewhere in the FDS memory. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety.

So they devised a plan to divide the affected code into sections and store those sections in different places in the FDS. To make this plan work, they also needed to adjust those code sections to ensure, for example, that they all still function as a whole. Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well.

The team started by singling out the code responsible for packaging the spacecraft’s engineering data. They sent it to its new location in the FDS memory on April 18. A radio signal takes about 22 ½ hours to reach Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and another 22 ½ hours for a signal to come back to Earth. When the mission flight team heard back from the spacecraft on April 20, they saw that the modification worked: For the first time in five months, they have been able to check the health and status of the spacecraft.

Get the Latest News from the Final Frontier

During the coming weeks, the team will relocate and adjust the other affected portions of the FDS software. These include the portions that will start returning science data.

Voyager 2 continues to operate normally. Launched over 46 years ago , the twin Voyager spacecraft are the longest-running and most distant spacecraft in history. Before the start of their interstellar exploration, both probes flew by Saturn and Jupiter, and Voyager 2 flew by Uranus and Neptune.

Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages JPL for NASA.

News Media Contact

Calla Cofield

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

626-808-2469

[email protected]

Mobile Site
Staff Directory
Advertise with Ars

Filter by topic

Biz & IT
Gaming & Culture

Front page layout

22.5 light hours —

Recoding voyager 1—nasa’s interstellar explorer is finally making sense again, "we're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for, and that's always good news.”.

Stephen Clark - Apr 23, 2024 5:56 pm UTC

Engineers have partially restored a 1970s-era computer on NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft after five months of long-distance troubleshooting, building confidence that humanity's first interstellar probe can eventually resume normal operations.

Several dozen scientists and engineers gathered Saturday in a conference room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or connected virtually, to wait for a new signal from Voyager 1. The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS) , one of the probe's three computers.

“In the minutes leading up to when we were going to see a signal, you could have heard a pin drop in the room," said Linda Spilker, project scientist for NASA's two Voyager spacecraft at JPL. "It was quiet. People were looking very serious. They were looking at their computer screens. Each of the subsystem (engineers) had pages up that they were looking at, to watch as they would be populated."

Finally, a breakthrough

Launched nearly 47 years ago, Voyager 1 is flying on an outbound trajectory more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) from Earth, and it takes 22-and-a-half hours for a radio signal to cover that distance at the speed of light. This means it takes nearly two days for engineers to uplink a command to Voyager 1 and get a response.

In November, Voyager 1 suddenly stopped transmitting its usual stream of data containing information about the spacecraft's health and measurements from its scientific instruments. Instead, the spacecraft's data stream was entirely unintelligible. Because the telemetry was unreadable, experts on the ground could not easily tell what went wrong. They hypothesized the source of the problem might be in the memory bank of the FDS.

There was a breakthrough last month when engineers sent up a novel command to "poke" Voyager 1's FDS to send back a readout of its memory. This readout allowed engineers to pinpoint the location of the problem in the FDS memory . The FDS is responsible for packaging engineering and scientific data for transmission to Earth.

After a few weeks, NASA was ready to uplink a solution to get the FDS to resume packing engineering data. This data stream includes information on the status of the spacecraft—things like power levels and temperature measurements. This command went up to Voyager 1 through one of NASA's large Deep Space Network antennas Thursday.

Then, the wait for a response. Spilker, who started working on Voyager right out of college in 1977, was in the room when Voyager 1's signal reached Earth Saturday.

"When the time came to get the signal, we could clearly see all of a sudden, boom, we had data, and there were tears and smiles and high fives," she told Ars. "Everyone was very happy and very excited to see that, hey, we're back in communication again with Voyager 1. We're going to see the status of the spacecraft, the health of the spacecraft, for the first time in five months."

Voyager 1's team celebrates the arrival of a radio signal from the spacecraft Saturday.

Throughout the five months of troubleshooting, Voyager's ground team continued to receive signals indicating the spacecraft was still alive. But until Saturday, they lacked insight into specific details about the status of Voyager 1.

“It’s pretty much just the way we left it," Spilker said. "We're still in the initial phases of analyzing all of the channels and looking at their trends. Some of the temperatures went down a little bit with this period of time that's gone on, but we're pretty much seeing everything we had hoped for. And that's always good news.”

Relocating code

Through their investigation, Voyager's ground team discovered a single chip responsible for storing a portion of the FDS memory stopped working, probably due to either a cosmic ray hit or a failure of aging hardware. This affected some of the computer's software code.

"That took out a section of memory," Spilker said. "What they have to do is relocate that code into a different portion of the memory, and then make sure that anything that uses those codes, those subroutines, know to go to the new location of memory, for access and to run it."

Only about 3 percent of the FDS memory was corrupted by the bad chip, so engineers needed to transplant that code into another part of the memory bank. But no single location is large enough to hold the section of code in its entirety, NASA said.

So the Voyager team divided the code into sections for storage in different places in the FDS. This wasn't just a copy-and-paste job. Engineers needed to modify some of the code to make sure it will all work together. "Any references to the location of that code in other parts of the FDS memory needed to be updated as well," NASA said in a statement.

reader comments

Channel ars technica.

We've detected unusual activity from your computer network

To continue, please click the box below to let us know you're not a robot.

Why did this happen?

Please make sure your browser supports JavaScript and cookies and that you are not blocking them from loading. For more information you can review our Terms of Service and Cookie Policy .

For inquiries related to this message please contact our support team and provide the reference ID below.

Share full article

Supported by

Guest Essay

A Dangerous Game Is Underway in Asia

Three Taiwanese Air Force members looking at an aircraft flying overhead.

By Mike M. Mochizuki and Michael D. Swaine

Dr. Mochizuki is a professor at George Washington University. Dr. Swaine is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

This month, President Biden threw one of the most lavish state dinners in Washington’s recent memory. Celebrities and billionaires flocked to the White House to dine in honor of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan, posing for photos in front of an elaborate display of Japanese fans. Jeff Bezos dropped by; Paul Simon provided the entertainment.

The spectacle was part of a carefully orchestrated series of events to showcase the renewed U.S.-Japan relationship — and the notable transformation of the United States’ security alliances in Asia. The next day, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines was also in the U.S. capital for a historic U.S.-Japan-Philippines summit, during which a new trilateral security partnership was announced.

Both events were directed at the same audience: China.

Over the past several years, Washington has built a series of multilateral security arrangements like these in the Asia-Pacific region. Although U.S. officials claim that the recent mobilization of allies and partners is not aimed at China, don’t believe it. Indeed, Mr. Kishida emphasized in a speech to Congress on April 11 that China presents “the greatest strategic challenge” both to Japan and to the international community.

China’s recent activity is, of course, concerning. Its military has acquired ever more potent ways to counter U.S. and allied capabilities in the Western Pacific and has behaved aggressively in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere, alarming its neighbors.

But Washington’s pursuit of an increasingly complex lattice of security ties is a dangerous game. Those ties include upgrades in defense capabilities, more joint military exercises, deeper intelligence sharing, new initiatives on defense production and technology cooperation and the enhancement of contingency planning and military coordination. All of that may make Beijing more cautious about the blatant use of military force in the region. But the new alliance structure is not, on its own, a long-term guarantor of regional peace and stability — and could even increase the risk of stumbling into a conflict.

The security partnership rolled out this month in Washington is only the latest in a string of new defense configurations that reach across Asia and the Pacific. In 2017 the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, was revived, promoting collaboration among the United States, Japan, Australia and India. In September 2021, Australia, Britain and the United States began their partnership, known as AUKUS, and the United States, Japan and South Korea committed to closer cooperation in a summit at Camp David last August.

All of these moves have been motivated primarily by concern over Beijing, which has, in turn, castigated these countries as being part of a U.S.-led effort to create an Asian version of NATO designed to contain China. None amount to a collective defense pact like the NATO treaty, whose Article 5 considers an armed attack on one member as “an attack against them all.” But China will nevertheless almost certainly regard the latest agreement among the United States, Japan and the Philippines — with which it is engaged in an active territorial dispute — as further confirmation of a Washington-led attempt to threaten its interests.

It’s not yet clear how Beijing will respond. But it may double down on the expansion of its military capabilities and intensify its use of military and paramilitary force to assert its territorial claims in the region, especially regarding the sensitive issue of Taiwan. Beijing could also promote further Chinese military cooperation with Russia in the form of enhanced military exercises and deployments.

The net result may be an Asia-Pacific region that is even more divided and dangerous than it is today, marked by a deepening arms race. In this increasingly contentious and militarized environment, the chance of some political incident or military accident triggering a devastating regional war is likely to grow. This is especially likely, given the absence of meaningful U.S. and allied crisis communication channels with China to prevent such an incident from spiraling out of control.

To prevent this nightmare, the U.S. and its allies and partners must invest much more in diplomacy with China, in addition to bolstering military deterrence.

For a start, the United States and key allies like Japan should make a sustained effort to establish a durable crisis prevention and management dialogue with China involving each nation’s foreign policy and security agencies. So far, such dialogues have been limited primarily to military channels and topics. It is critical that both civilian and military officials understand the many possible sources of inadvertent crises and develop ways to prevent them or manage them if they occur. This process should include the establishment of an agreed-upon set of leaders’ best practices for crisis management and a trusted but unofficial channel through which the relevant parties can discuss crisis-averting understandings.

The immediate focus for the United States and Japan should be on avoiding actions that add to tensions across the Taiwan Strait. The deployment of American military trainers to Taiwan on what looks like a permanent basis and suggestions by some U.S. officials and policy analysts that Taiwan be treated as a security linchpin within the overall U.S. defense posture in Asia are needlessly provocative. They also openly contradict America’s longstanding “one China” policy , under which the United States ended the deployment of all U.S. military forces to Taiwan and does not view Taiwan as a key U.S. security location, caring only that the Taiwan issue be handled peacefully and without coercion.

Japan, for its part, has also become more circumspect about its own “one China” policy by being reluctant to reaffirm explicitly that Tokyo does not support Taiwan’s independence. Recent statements by some political leaders in Tokyo about Japanese military forces being ready to help defend Taiwan will almost certainly inflame Chinese leaders, who remember that Japan seized Taiwan after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and ’95.

Washington and Tokyo should clearly reaffirm their previous commitments on the China-Taiwan dispute. Tokyo also should confirm that it does not support any unilateral move by Taiwan toward independence and resist U.S. efforts to compel Japan to commit to Taiwan’s defense. Although American officials have reportedly been prodding Japan to join military planning for a Taiwan conflict, a large majority of Japanese residents do not favor fighting to defend Taiwan. Tokyo can best contribute to deterring China by focusing on strengthening its ability to defend its own islands.

Washington and its allies should shift to a more positive approach to China, aimed at fostering accommodation and restraint. This could include working to secure credible mutual assurances regarding limits on Chinese military deployments, such as amphibious forces and missile capabilities relevant to Taiwan, in return for U.S. limits on the levels and types of arms that it sells to the island. They could also explore increasing security cooperation with China regarding cyberattacks, the defense of sea lanes and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as better collaboration to combat climate change and the outbreak of another pandemic.

China, of course, has its own role to play. In the end, Beijing, like the United States, wants to avoid a crisis and conflict in the region. Given that, it should respond to a more cooperative American and allied approach by moderating its own coercive behavior regarding maritime disputes.

None of this will be easy, given the intense suspicion that now exists between Beijing and Washington and its allies. But new thinking and new diplomatic efforts could incentivize China to reciprocate in meaningful ways. At the very least, it’s necessary to try. Focusing on military deterrence alone won’t work. Trying to find a way to cooperate with China is the best way — perhaps the only way — to steer the world away from disaster.

Mike M. Mochizuki is a professor at George Washington University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Michael D. Swaine is a senior research fellow focusing on China-related security topics at the Quincy Institute.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook , Instagram , TikTok , WhatsApp , X and Threads .

An official website of the United States government

The .gov means it’s official. Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

The site is secure. The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Publications
Account settings

Preview improvements coming to the PMC website in October 2024. Learn More or Try it out now .

Advanced Search
Journal List
Sage Choice

The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of Long-Forgotten Trauma

Henry otgaar.

1 Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Section of Forensic Psychology, Maastricht University

2 Department of Psychology, City, University of London

3 Leuvens Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, Catholic University of Leuven

Mark L. Howe

Lawrence patihis.

4 School of Psychology, University of Southern Mississippi

Harald Merckelbach

Steven jay lynn.

5 Laboratory of Consciousness, Cognition, and Psychopathology, Binghamton University

Scott O. Lilienfeld

6 Department of Psychology, Emory University

Elizabeth F. Loftus

7 Department of Psychological Science, University of California, Irvine

Can purely psychological trauma lead to a complete blockage of autobiographical memories? This long-standing question about the existence of repressed memories has been at the heart of one of the most heated debates in modern psychology. These so-called memory wars originated in the 1990s, and many scholars have assumed that they are over. We demonstrate that this assumption is incorrect and that the controversial issue of repressed memories is alive and well and may even be on the rise. We review converging research and data from legal cases indicating that the topic of repressed memories remains active in clinical, legal, and academic settings. We show that the belief in repressed memories occurs on a nontrivial scale (58%) and appears to have increased among clinical psychologists since the 1990s. We also demonstrate that the scientifically controversial concept of dissociative amnesia, which we argue is a substitute term for memory repression, has gained in popularity. Finally, we review work on the adverse side effects of certain psychotherapeutic techniques, some of which may be linked to the recovery of repressed memories. The memory wars have not vanished. They have continued to endure and contribute to potentially damaging consequences in clinical, legal, and academic contexts.

The past is never dead. It’s not even past. Faulkner (1950/2011 , p. 73)

More than 20 years ago, Crews (1995) coined the term “memory wars” to refer to a contentious debate regarding the existence of repressed memories, which refers to memories that become inaccessible for conscious inspection because of an active process known as repression. This debate raged throughout the 1990s and was widely assumed to have subsided in the new millennium. A number of prominent authors who were skeptical of repressed memories (e.g., Barden, 2016 ; McHugh, 2003 ; Paris, 2012 ) declared the memory wars to be effectively over, essentially arguing that most researchers and clinicians now understand that believing in such memories without reservation is at best questionable scientifically. The argument among these authors is essentially that the recovered-memory skeptics won. Others argue that the memory wars have been resolved in the opposite direction, stating that there is now better evidence for a trauma-dissociation model and less room for a skeptical stance toward repressed ( dissociated ; see below) memories ( Dalenberg et al., 2012 ). Some proponents of the idea of dissociative amnesia (i.e., the inability to remember autobiographic experiences usually as a result of trauma) have even likened skeptics to climate-science deniers ( Brand et al., 2018 , in response to Merckelbach & Patihis, 2018 ). Their argument appears to be that they have won the memory wars, and further proof of this is the continued inclusion of dissociative amnesia in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ( DSM–5 ; American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ; see also Spiegel et al., 2011 ).

In this article, we present evidence that the debate concerning repressed memories is by no means dead. To the contrary, we contend that it rages on today and that the term dissociative amnesia is being used as a substitute term for repressed memory. To buttress this point, we present converging lines of evidence from several sources suggesting that the concept of repressed memories has not vanished and that it has merely reappeared in numerous guises (e.g., in the context of dissociative amnesia). Admittedly, some researchers have argued that the memory wars have persisted (e.g., Patihis, Ho, Tingen, Lilienfeld, & Loftus, 2014 ), but no review has systematically and critically evaluated this proposition. In this article, we amass evidence from multiple sources showing that beliefs associated with repressed memories and related topics such as dissociative amnesia, far from being extinguished, as claimed by some scholars, remain very much alive today. Furthermore, we demonstrate that these beliefs carry significant risks in clinical and legal settings.

Repressed Memories and the Memory Wars

As Ellenberger (1970) explained in his classic monograph, the concept of repressed memories traces its roots to the psychoanalytic theory and practice of Sigmund Freud, who in turn was influenced by physician-hypnotists, such as Jean-Martin Charcot, in the final decades of the 19th century. At the heart of this concept is the idea that traumatic experiences are often so overwhelming that people use defense mechanisms to cope with them. One of these mechanisms involves the automatic and unconscious repression of the traumatic memory with the consequence that people no longer recollect or retain awareness of the experience that triggered it (e.g., Loftus, 1993 ; McNally, 2005 ; Piper, Lillevik, & Kritzer, 2008 ). Nevertheless, according to this view, the repressed trauma ostensibly exacts a serious mental and physical toll ( Hornstein, 1992 ), manifesting itself psychologically and somatically in a wide array of symptoms (e.g., fainting, amnesia, mutism). This influential body-keeps-the-score hypothesis implies that trauma can be “entirely organized on an implicit or perceptual level, without an accompanying narrative about what happened” ( van der Kolk & Fisler, 1995 , p. 512). The goal of therapy is thus to make the implicit—the repressed—explicit ( Yapko, 1994a ), following Freud’s famous tenet that psychoanalysis aims to make the unconscious conscious. Thus, the notion of repressed memories encompasses three ideas: People repress traumatic experiences, the repressed content has psychopathological potential, and recovering traumatic content is necessary for engendering symptom relief.

In the 1990s, as we demonstrate in a review of data of surveyed clinicians, the belief in repressed memories was endemic in therapeutic circles. Even when patients did not recollect the trauma, such as sexual abuse, some therapists suggested that their unconscious may harbor repressed memories. When clients presented with symptoms of, for example, anxiety, mood, personality, or eating disorders, many clinicians seemed to take these symptoms as signs of long-repressed memories of abuse. Furthermore, in the 1990s, dream interpretation, hypnosis, guided imagery, repeated cuing of memories, and diary methods, among other recovered-memory techniques, were used by many practitioners to ostensibly uncover repressed memories and bring them to the surface of consciousness. As a result of these treatments, patients started to recover purported memories of abuse, typically sexual abuse, and some filed criminal or civil suits against their alleged perpetrator ( Loftus, 1994 ; Loftus & Ketcham, 1994 ).

During these therapeutic interventions, suggestive techniques were commonly used to recover the alleged repressed memory. At that time, laboratory research began to show the deleterious effects of suggestion on autobiographical recollections of childhood episodes. In one of the first such studies, Loftus and Pickrell (1995) asked students to report on four events that happened in their childhood. One event was fabricated and involved being lost in a shopping mall at about 5 years old. Students were told that their parents provided these narratives to the experimenters, while in fact, parents had confirmed that the event did not happen. After three suggestive interviews, 25% ( n = 6) of the participants claimed that the false event in fact had occurred. This and other studies during the 1990s indicated that false autobiographical memories 1 can be implanted with suggestive interviewing techniques (e.g., Hyman, Husband, & Billings, 1995 ; for earlier relevant work, see Laurence & Perry, 1983 ; for a review of false memories before 1980, see Patihis & Younes Burton, 2015 ).

Many memory scholars have argued on the basis of this research that repressed memories recovered in therapy may not be based on true events but could be false memories ( Lindsay & Read, 1995 ; Loftus & Davis, 2006 ). An additional scenario offered by researchers is that some people may reinterpret childhood events as a result of therapy and come to experience this reinterpretation as a recovered memory of abuse ( McNally, 2012 ). For example, Schooler (2001) argued that individuals may initially not experience their abuse as traumatic but later come to reevaluate it in this fashion. This change in meta-awareness may be experienced as a recovery of a memory when it instead comprises a new interpretation of a memory that was accessible all along. Schooler offered several case descriptions suggestive of this intriguing process, but strictly speaking it does not involve the reemergence of repressed memories into consciousness. Nevertheless, the reinterpretation account may be a plausible explanation of certain recovered memories of events that were genuinely experienced.

Still, not all cases that were described by Schooler (2001) can be interpreted in terms of reevaluation. Wagenaar and Crombag (2005) , for example, noted the inherent problems that such descriptions have to demonstrate the existence of recovered memories. They criticized Schooler’s case descriptions on the grounds that many assumptions needed to be met to confirm the existence of recovered memories in these cases. For example, Wagenaar and Crombag observed that alleged victims sometimes received therapy that may have influenced their memories. In addition, Wagenaar and Crombag noted that claiming to have forgotten sexual abuse is not the same as having forgotten the abuse.

Apart from suggestive techniques that might lead to the creation of memory aberrations, some memory researchers noted that the concept of repressed memories is difficult to reconcile with studies on the effects of trauma on memory. Specifically, a large body of data suggests that the central aspects of trauma tend to be relatively well remembered ( McNally, 2005 ). Several authors concluded that complete memory loss for traumatic events is rare among trauma victims, such as Holocaust survivors ( Wagenaar & Groeneweg, 1990 ), survivors of Japanese/Indonesian concentration camps ( Merckelbach, Dekkers, Wessel, & Roefs, 2003 ), and victims of sexual abuse ( Goodman et al., 2003 ). Furthermore, the idea of repressed memories runs counter to well-established principles of human memory. For example, purported repressed memories are often about repeated experiences of abuse, but repeated events are generally well recollected. In addition, people with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) frequently experience flashbacks and intrusive memories of the trauma and hence do not typically report repressed memories, at least of their triggering traumatic event. In addition, the idea of apparent recovered memories suggests that experiences can be forgotten and “recovered” following retrieval cues. This common memory phenomenon does not require the idea of repressed memories (for an overview, see Roediger & Bergman, 1998 ).

The recovery of mundane childhood memories is a perfectly normal phenomenon, although people may find it difficult to estimate how long they have not thought about a childhood experience ( Parks, 1999 ). The recovery of a purportedly long-forgotten trauma is less plausible in light of everything that we know about traumatic memories (see above), and in such cases the question is whether there is independent evidence to corroborate the memory. Thus, a central issue concerning recovered memories is whether they can be independently corroborated. Studies examining corroborative evidence of recovered memories are often limited because they rely exclusively on victims’ characterizations of corroboration (e.g., Chu, Frey, Ganzel, & Matthews, 1999 ; Herman & Harvey, 1997 ). Research in which at least partial independent corroboration has been sought demonstrated that continuous memories of child sexual abuse recalled outside of therapy were more often corroborated than discontinued memories of abuse recovered in therapy ( Geraerts et al., 2007 ; see also McNally, Perlman, Ristuccia, & Clancy, 2006 ). Another key point concerning recovered memories is that people may not think about the abuse for many years or may forget their previous recollections of their traumatic experience. Such people might then spontaneously recover memories of abuse when reminded about the abuse outside of therapy. However, such a phenomenon, psychologically important as it is, is a far cry from repressing a richly detailed memory in its entirety and later recalling it in therapy or everyday life ( McNally & Geraerts, 2009 ).

One way to examine how clinicians think about the reality of repressed memories is to survey them about their beliefs on the topic and on their technical knowledge of how memory works. In this respect, a summary of practitioner-survey studies since the 1990s is informative.

Memory Beliefs About Repressed Memories: From Then to Now

Beliefs among clinical psychologists.

Scientific interest in what therapists and other mental-health professionals know about the functioning of memory originated because incorrect beliefs about memory could catalyze suggestive clinical practices and flawed treatment plans ( Gore-Felton et al., 2000 ). Yapko (1994a , 1994b ) conducted one of the first surveys of memory beliefs of psychology professionals. He found that 34% ( n = 190) of master’s-level psychotherapists and 23% ( n = 48) of PhD psychotherapists agreed that traumatic memories uncovered via hypnosis are authentic. Moreover, 59% ( n = 513) of clinicians agreed that “events that we know occurred but can’t remember are repressed memories” ( Yapko, 1994a , p. 231). Yapko (1994a) also found that 49% ( n = 419) agreed that “memory is a reliable mechanism when the self-defensive need for repression is lifted” (p. 232). Dammeyer, Nightingale, and McCoy (1997) found that 58% ( n = 64) of PhD-level clinicians, 71% ( n = 74) of PsyD-level clinicians, and 60% ( n = 43) of MSW-level clinicians agreed that repressed memories are genuine. Merckelbach and Wessel (1998) detected an even higher percentage: 96% ( n = 25) of licensed psychotherapists endorsed the view that repressed memories exist. Poole, Lindsay, Memon, and Bull (1995 ; Survey 2) found that 71% ( n = 37) of clinical psychologists reported that they had encountered at least one case of a recovered memory (see also Polusny & Follette, 1996 ).

These studies were performed in the 1990s, which is considered to be the zenith of interest in repressed memories. After that period, a wealth of research published in psychological, psychiatric, and more legally oriented journals concluded that the notion of repressed memories is a highly problematic concept, particularly in the courts ( Loftus, 2003 ; McNally, 2005 ; Piper et al., 2008 ; Porter, Campbell, Birt, & Woodworth, 2003 ; Rofé, 2008 ; Takarangi, Polaschek, Hignett, & Garry, 2008 ). Despite these critical articles, many psychologists, especially clinical and counseling psychologists, continue to harbor the idea that traumatic memories can be buried for years or decades in the unconscious and later recovered. Magnussen and Melinder (2012) surveyed licensed psychologists and found that 63% ( n = 540) believed recovered memories to be “real.” Kemp, Spilling, Hughes, and de Pauw (2013) demonstrated that 89% ( n = 333) of surveyed clinical psychologists believed that memories for childhood trauma (such as sexual abuse) can be “blocked out” for many years. Patihis et al. (2014) found that 60.3% ( n = 35) of clinical practitioners and 69.1% ( n = 56) of psychoanalysts agreed that traumatic memories are often repressed. Kagee and Breet (2015) found that 75.7% ( n = 78) of 103 South African psychologists responded probably or definitely true to the statement that “individuals commonly repress the memories of traumatic experiences” ( Kagee & Breet, 2015 , p. 5).

Ost, Easton, Hope, French, and Wright (2017) showed that 69.6% ( n = 87) of clinical psychologists strongly endorsed the belief that “the mind is capable of unconsciously ‘blocking out’ memories of traumatic events” (p. 60). Wessel (2018) recently examined memory beliefs among eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) practitioners. EMDR is thought to be effective in making traumatic memories less vivid and emotionally negative ( Lee & Cuijpers, 2013 ). Wessel asked EMDR practitioners whether access to traumatic memories can be blocked and found that 93% ( n = 457) responded affirmatively.

Beliefs among other professionals

Researchers have surveyed other professionals for whom it would be important to possess accurate knowledge concerning memory. Many of these studies did not specifically ask about professionals’ beliefs concerning the existence of repressed memories but instead asked about issues related to eyewitness memory (e.g., confidence-accuracy relationship; see Magnussen, Melinder, Stridbeck, & Raja, 2010 ). Exceptions to this trend include the study by Benton, Ross, Bradshaw, Thomas, and Bradshaw (2006) . In an American sample, they demonstrated that 73% ( n = 81) of jurors, 50% ( n = 21) of judges, and 65% ( n = 34) of law-enforcement personnel believed in long-term repressed memories. Odinot, Boon, and Wolters (2015) asked Dutch police interviewers about whether traumatic memories can be repressed. They found that 75.7% ( n = 108) agreed that they could. In a recent study, 84% ( n = 133) of Dutch child-protection workers indicated that traumatic memories are often repressed ( Erens, Otgaar, Patihis, & De Ruiter, 2019 ).

Beliefs among laypersons

Laypeople such as undergraduates have also been asked in a number of studies to indicate their levels of belief concerning the existence of repressed memories ( Lynn, Evans, Laurence, & Lilienfeld, 2015 ). Golding, Sanchez, and Sego (1996) reported that (a) 89% of 613 undergraduates were familiar with a circumstance in which someone recovered a repressed memory, (b) 75% of these students noted that the source of this information was television, and (c) belief in repressed memories was positively correlated with the amount of media exposure. Merckelbach and Wessel (1998) found that 94% ( n = 47) of students endorsed the idea that repressed memories exist. Magnussen et al. (2006) surveyed 2000 Norwegian people from the general public. They found that 45% ( n = 900) of respondents believed that traumatic memories can be repressed. Strikingly, 40% ( n = 800) believed that people who committed a murder can repress the memory of that event. Finally, Patihis et al. (2014) found that 81% ( n = 316) of undergraduates believed that traumatic memories are often repressed.

On the basis of these survey data, we calculated the overall percentage of people who believe in the existence of repressed memories in the combined samples (see Table 1 ). Although caution needs to be exercised when collapsing data across such surveys because the samples may vary on many dimensions, aggregated data can be informative given they can generally be expected to cancel out largely random differences in participant characteristics. On average, 58% ( n = 4,745) of those who were surveyed indicated some degree of belief in the existence of repressed memories. When we examined the prevalence of these beliefs across subgroups within the combined sample, interesting results emerged. Among clinical psychologists, 70% ( n = 2,305) believed in the existence of repressed memories. This percentage was somewhat lower in the 1990s (61%; n = 719) and increased to 76% ( n = 1,586) from 2010 onward. Furthermore, 75% ( n = 377) of other professionals expressed a strong belief in repressed memories, as did 46% ( n = 2,063) of laypersons.

Percentages of People Who Believe in the Concept of Repressed Memory Among Various Studies

Note: U.S. = United States; U.K. = United Kingdom.

We also performed additional analyses. For example, when we focused only on survey items using the word “repression,” we found a prevalence of 65% ( n = 1,265) in the belief of repressed memories. In addition, because the items used differed to some extent among survey studies, we concentrated on statements for which people were asked specifically about the frequency of repressed memories (e.g., “Traumatic memories are often repressed”). When we focused on these statements ( Erens et al., 2019 ; Kagee & Breet, 2015 ; Patihis et al., 2014 ), we found that 78% ( n = 618) of surveyed people believed that traumatic experiences are often repressed. We also compared the rates of belief in repressed memories in the 1990s with those of all studies performed after the 1990s. A prevalence of 62% ( n = 766) was observed for studies in the 1990s; this rate was slightly lower for studies performed after the 1990s (57%; n = 3,979).

Taken together, our data suggest, perhaps surprisingly, that mental-health professionals in our combined samples were not more critical about repressed memories than were laypeople. This finding underscores our argument that a belief in repressed memories is deeply rooted in modern Western societies. Moreover, the data suggest that despite a plethora of scientific work calling the existence of repressed memories into question (e.g., Loftus & Davis, 2006 ), clinical psychologists’, other mental-health professionals’, and the general public’s views on repressed memories remain strong. Furthermore, it seems that belief in repressed memories even increased within clinical psychologists.

Still, in certain groups of professionals, notably those working in legal psychology, skepticism regarding repressed memories is high. For example, Kassin, Tubb, Hosch, and Memon (2001) found that 22% of experts opined that repressed memories are “reliable enough” to present as evidence in the courtroom. Likewise, some recent research suggests that memory scientists tend to harbor strong reservations concerning the existence of repressed memories (only 12.5% agreed that repressed memories can be retrieved in therapy accurately; 27.2% of experimental psychologists agreed to some extent that traumatic memories are often repressed; Patihis, Ho, Loftus, & Herrera, 2018 ). It is important to emphasize that many informed scientists are skeptical: It counters the argument that repressed memories must exist because so many people believe in them, a tempting logical error termed the bandwagon fallacy ( Briggs, 2014 ).

Many of these surveys relied on the terms repression or repressed memories. These terms may have all kinds of connotations, leading to artificially raised endorsement patterns suggestive of belief in repressed memories. Brewin, Li, Ntarantana, Unsworth, and McNeilis (2019 ; Study 3) recently argued that high endorsement rates in the belief in repressed memories (to the statement “Traumatic experiences can be repressed for many years and then recovered”) actually reflect a belief in conscious memory suppression (see section below on retrieval inhibition). They found that when members of the general public were asked about their belief in conscious repression and were questioned regarding repressed memories (“Traumatic experiences can be repressed for many years and then recovered”), similar endorsement rates were found. However, because Brewin and colleagues did not include a survey item on unconscious repression, it is unknown which endorsement rates would be detected for such a controversial statement. To remedy this omission, Otgaar et al. (2019) specifically inquired about people’s belief in unconscious repression. They found high endorsement rates for belief in both conscious and unconscious repression (around 60%), implying that the belief in repressed memories is still widespread. In what follows, we show that, as is true for the belief in repressed memories, dissociative amnesia, a conceptual twin of repression, has been deeply embedded into psychology lore in such a way that it could be the most potent threat to extending the memory wars.

Dissociative Amnesia = Repressed Memories?

Despite the widespread belief in repressed memory, the term “repression” became controversial in the memory wars and is now seldom used in a credible context in scientific publications. After the concept became intensely controversial, many clinicians adopted a new and perhaps more palatable term dissociative amnesia . This term became the preferred and more widely used appellation for the process whereby traumas are rendered inaccessible. For example, dissociative amnesia is mentioned in DSM–5 ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ), whereas repressed memory or repression is not.

There might be several reasons for why dissociative amnesia is listed in the DSM–5 . One likely reason is that the substantial majority of the Task Force members of the DSM–5 were psychiatrists rather than psychologists, and the Task Force did not include memory experts (see Yan, 2007 ). This Task Force also did not adequately reflect the full range of scientific opinions regarding the empirical status of dissociative disorders, including dissociative amnesia. Indeed, as Lilienfeld, Watts, and Smith (2012) noted the following:

It is troubling that the DSM–5 Anxiety, Obsessive-Compulsive Spectrum, Posttraumatic, and Dissociative Disorders Work Group contains no members who have expressed doubts in scholarly outlets regarding the etiology of dissociative identity disorder and related dissociative disorders (e.g., dissociative amnesia, dissociative fugue), despite the fact that these disorders are exceedingly controversial in the scientific community. (p. 831)

Case studies of patients claiming dissociative amnesia have also figured prominently in the clinical literature, in turn perhaps contributing to the prima facie validity of the construct of dissociative amnesia (e.g., Staniloiu, Markowitsch, & Kordon, 2018 ).

We propose that during and after the 1990s, when the term repressed memory was widely criticized, proponents began to favor the term dissociative amnesia instead. Perhaps Holmes (1994) was one of the first to notice this trend:

In the absence of good laboratory or clinical evidence for repression, proponents of the concept have begun to emphasize dissociation instead. But that is simply another name for repression; if one dissociates oneself from an event (is no longer aware of it), one has repressed it. Dissociative amnesia is supposed to occur after certain traumatic experiences. Yet alleged cases of this phenomenon are very rare. (p. 18)

Consistent with this idea, dissociative amnesia was not mentioned in pre-1990s work on repression by Holmes (1972 , 1974 ) and Holmes and Schallow (1969) . This subtle but significant name change has muddied the waters and provided a cover for the continued practice of psychotherapy that involves repressed memories, albeit under new terminology.

Dissociative amnesia is defined in the DSM–5 as the “inability to recall autobiographical information” that (a) is “usually of a traumatic or stressful nature,” (b) is “inconsistent with ordinary forgetting,” (c) should be “successfully stored,” (d) involves a period of time when there is an “inability to recall,” (e) is not caused by “a substance” or “neurological . . . condition,” and (f) is “always potentially reversible because the memory has been successfully stored” ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 , p. 298). These defining features serve as an umbrella set of criteria for three types of dissociative amnesia listed in the DSM–5. Localized dissociative amnesia applies to memory loss for a “circumscribed period of time” and may be broader than amnesia for a single traumatic event, for example, “months or years associated with child abuse” (p. 298). Because localized dissociative amnesia most resembles what was formerly called repressed memory, it is noteworthy that the DSM–5 calls this type “the most common form of dissociative amnesia.” In selective dissociative amnesia, the individual “can recall some, but not all, of the events during a circumscribed period of time” (p. 298). Generalized dissociative amnesia involves “a complete loss of memory for one’s life history” and “is rare” (p. 298). The DSM–5 indicates “histories of trauma, child abuse, and victimization” as features that support a diagnosis of dissociative amnesia (p. 299).

Although dissociative symptoms can manifest themselves in contexts quite different from trauma—for example, after the ingestion or administration of the anesthetic ketamine (Simeon, 2004) or ecstasy, cannabis, and cocaine ( van Heugten-van der Kloet et al., 2015 )— Table 2 illustrates similarities in the definitions of dissociative amnesia from the DSM–5 and definitions advanced by scientific skeptics of repressed memory (text from Loftus, 1993 ; and Holmes, 1974 ). We contend, on the basis of striking parallels in definitions, that skeptical arguments against repressed memories should apply with equal force to dissociative amnesia. More specifically, definitions of both dissociative amnesia and repressed memory share the idea that traumatic or upsetting material is stored, becomes inaccessible because of the trauma, and can later be retrieved in intact form.

Side-by-Side Comparisons of the Definitions of Dissociative Amnesia and Repressed Memory

Note: DSM–5 = fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders ; APA = American Psychiatric Association.

Although repressed memory as a concept is rarely defended in scientific circles these days, the idea of dissociative amnesia has become popular, especially in some psychiatric quarters. For example, between 2010 and 2019, the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation has published 71 articles related to dissociative amnesia; between 1990 and 1999, no such articles were published. 2 This ascension appears to be a major reason for the revitalization of the memory wars and for the continuation of therapies that attempt to exhume traumatic memories. In the first two editions of the DSM ( American Psychiatric Association, 1952 , 1968 ), neither dissociative amnesia nor psychogenic amnesia was listed or mentioned, although dissociative types of neurosis were. Psychogenic amnesia first appeared in the third edition of the DSM ( American Psychiatric Association, 1980 ; mentioned 19 times). Dissociative amnesia appeared for the first time in the fourth edition of the DSM ( American Psychiatric Association, 1994 ; mentioned 50 times). In DSM–5, dissociative amnesia appeared 75 times ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). Interestingly, in no edition of the DSM have the words repress, repressed memory , or repression been used.

The DSM has codified and widely disseminated the concept of dissociative amnesia. In some quarters of psychology and psychiatry, dissociative amnesia is apparently taken as a valid and totally unproblematic concept (with notable exceptions; see Pope, Poliakoff, Parker, Boynes, & Hudson, 2007 ). Nevertheless, the definition of dissociative amnesia is scientifically fraught in many respects, just as is repressed memory. There are inherent problems when trying to ascertain whether a trauma has been stored but is nevertheless inaccessible. First, there is the complex problem of the lack of falsifiability: The only way we can determine whether a memory was stored is by memorial report, but a memorial report instantly disproves the claim that the memory is inaccessible. Second, it is difficult to test, or falsify, whether psychological trauma is the reason why an event is not remembered. How this is established depends in part on the theoretical orientation of the psychologist and whether she or he interprets an inability to recall as having been caused by psychogenic trauma or mundane encoding failures or forgetting mechanisms.

Indeed, one key question is whether cases that seem to document dissociative amnesia or repressed memory can be explained in terms of ordinary memory mechanisms. An example is provided by McNally (2003) , who commented on two alleged cases of dissociative/psychogenic amnesia in children who had witnessed a lightning strike. McNally concluded that the memory loss could plausibly be explained by the fact that

both amnestic youngsters had themselves been struck by side flashes from the main lightning bolt, knocked unconscious, and nearly killed. Given the serious effects on the brain of being knocked unconscious by lightning, it is little wonder that these two children had no memory of the event. (p. 192)

The presence of a history of (mild) brain injury in case descriptions of patients diagnosed with dissociative amnesia has also been noted by other authors ( Staniloiu & Markowitsch, 2014 ).

Consider another example that is illustrative of many similar clinical reports. Harrison et al. (2017) claimed to have documented 53 cases of, as the authors preferred to call it, “psychogenic amnesia.” These cases are cited by others as evidence for the existence of dissociative amnesia ( Brand et al., 2018 ). Harrison et al. (2017) asked the amnesics several questions concerning their autobiographical memory. Note that none of these cases adequately satisfied the six tenets of dissociative amnesia discussed earlier. For instance, amnesia due to neurological damage, such as “traumatic brain injury” ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 , p. 298), substance use, or other physical causes were not ruled out, which would preclude memory loss from being diagnosed in the DSM–5 as dissociative amnesia. The possibility of head injury causing memory impairment is particularly relevant here, especially because Harrison et al. found that a history of head injury was common in the “psychogenic” cases. In addition, Harrison et al. did not establish whether psychological shock or trauma caused the reported memory problems or that any recalled memories really were inaccessible for a period of time (see also Patihis, Otgaar, & Merckelbach, 2019 ).

Another issue is that Harrison et al. (2017) did not exclude the possibility that the dissociative amnesia was the result of feigning. This omission is remarkable because many of the patients with dissociative amnesia described by these authors were plagued by financial problems, and it would have been relatively easy to administer symptom-validity tests to them. With these tests, one can gauge whether patients endorse atypical or bizarre symptoms in an attempt to exaggerate their problems ( Lilienfeld, Thames, & Watts, 2013 ; Peters, van Oorsouw, Jelicic, & Merckelbach, 2013 ). Other authors have found that overreporting of bizarre and implausible symptoms (e.g., “When I hear voices I feel as though my teeth are leaving my body”) is prevalent among those who claim dissociative amnesia ( Cima, Merckelbach, Hollnack, & Knauer, 2003 ). Claiming dissociative amnesia is not the same as suffering from it (see also Peters et al., 2013 ). With this consideration in mind, Staniloiu and Markowitsch (2014) acknowledged in their review article that “the main challenge posed by the differential diagnosis of dissociative amnesia is to distinguish between true and feigned or malingered amnesia” (p. 237).

Key to our argument is that the evidence that scholars put forward for dissociative amnesia is typically subject to more plausible explanations. McNally (2007) listed several alternative and perhaps more plausible interpretations of the evidence for dissociative amnesia. First, memory problems that emerge after trauma might be caused by everyday forgetfulness and should not be confused with amnesia for the trauma. Second, some dissociative-amnesia theorists have confused organic amnesia with dissociative amnesia. Third, people who have experienced trauma and cannot recollect all of it might have failed to encode relevant parts of the traumatic experience. Fourth, victims of abuse commonly fail to disclose the abuse (e.g., because they feel ashamed), a reporting decision that should not be confused with dissociative amnesia. Fifth, when people cannot recollect any events (even traumatic ones) before the age of about 3 years old, it likely reflects the well-established phenomenon of childhood amnesia ( Fivush, Haden, & Adam, 1995 ; Howe, 2013 ) rather than dissociation. Sixth and finally, victims of abuse understandably often do not want to think about their traumatic experiences but often cannot help it because of flashbacks and intrusive memories. This phenomenon of suppression should not be confused with repression, and it falls well outside the domain of dissociative amnesia.

The Purported Empirical Evidence for Repressed-Memory Mechanisms

Three main areas of research are typically used to support repressed memories or dissociative amnesia: retrieval inhibition, motivated forgetting, and the relation between trauma and dissociation. Nevertheless, none of them fully supports all six parts of the definition of either concept shown in Table 2 .

For example, the phenomenon of retrieval inhibition ( M. C. Anderson & Green, 2001 ; Anderson & Hanslmayr, 2014 ; M. C. Anderson et al., 2004 ) suggests that some mechanism inhibits some memories whereas others come to consciousness, and that trying not to think about a memory can make it harder to remember. However, this phenomenon does not meet the six tenets of dissociative amnesia, such as the principle that the event is often traumatic in nature (see also Kihlstrom, 2002 ). Likewise, some research has shown limbic inhibition via the frontal cortex among individuals with a subtype of PTSD that involves emotional suppression ( Lanius et al., 2010 ). Although interesting, cases of PTSD involving inhibited emotions do not establish that a memory is stored, that it is inaccessible because of trauma and then later becomes accessible. One can inhibit one’s emotions regarding a painful memory while retaining a full recollection of this memory.

Other research has shown that alleged cases of dissociative amnesia were accompanied by increased prefrontal cortex activity and decreased activation of the hippocampus when patients were exposed to stimuli (i.e., certain faces) for which they had reported amnesia ( Kikuchi et al., 2009 ). However, it would be premature to interpret this study as evidence for repressed/dissociated memories. Before concluding that dissociative amnesia is involved, it is imperative to rule out other possible plausible explanations, such as feigned amnesia, which was not investigated in this work. This is all the more remarkable because one of the patients who claimed to be amnesic was worried about his impending marriage, whereas the other patient took a leave of absence from work after he had been involved in an accident.

Retrieval inhibition has been suggested to be “a viable model for repression” ( M. C. Anderson & Green, 2001 , p. 366). The canonical paradigm used to evaluate retrieval inhibition is the think/no-think paradigm ( M. C. Anderson & Green, 2001 ). In the original version, participants see several unrelated word pairs (e.g., ordeal-roach ). After seeing these stimuli, participants are presented with cue words (e.g., ordeal ) and are instructed to either recall the associated word (think) or not (no-think). When participants are asked to recall all response words during the presentation of cue words, no-think response words are remembered less accurately. A meta-analysis showed that no-think words were associated with lower recall rates than items that were studied but not asked about during the think/no-think phase (8% reduction; M. C. Anderson & Huddleston, 2012 ). One problem with this meta-analysis is that no unpublished studies from other labs were included, raising the specter of file-drawer effects and therefore inflated effect sizes. In fact, Bulevich, Roediger, Balota, and Butler (2006) conducted three experiments that failed to replicate the think/no-think memory-suppression effect and noted that “while working on this project, we have become aware of other groups of researchers who have failed to replicate the original M. C. Anderson and Green (2001) results, although most have given up and not attempted to publish their results” (p. 1574). Other memory researchers have recently pointed to unpublished studies that failed to replicate the original think/no-think finding (A. J. Barnier, personal communication, November 17, 2018; I. Wessel, personal communication, January 10, 2019).

Our argument is that the following two research lines are needed in the area of the think/no-think memory-suppression effect. First, empirical work is necessary on the relation between trauma and memory suppression. To date, there is only limited work in this specific domain. For example, Hulbert and Anderson (2018) found that students reporting a greater history of trauma showed more memory suppression than did students who reported having little experience with trauma. Although interesting, this research does not causally establish whether trauma led to more memory suppression. Second, a multicenter replication attempt would yield critical information regarding the robustness, reliability, and potential boundary conditions of the think/no-think memory-suppression effect.

Motivated forgetting of trauma-related words in the directed-forgetting paradigm is another technique held up to support dissociative amnesia (as argued by DePrince et al., 2012 as part of betrayal trauma theory). For example, DePrince and Freyd (2001) argued they had adduced evidence for motivated forgetting in dissociated individuals. In this study, participants scoring low and high on the dissociative-experiences scale (DES; E. M. Bernstein & Putnam, 1986 ) received several words (trauma-related and neutral) and after each word were instructed to remember or forget the word. The authors found that under divided-attention conditions, participants scoring high on dissociation recalled fewer trauma-related and more neutral words than those scoring low on dissociation. Still, several other researchers could not replicate these results (e.g., Devilly et al., 2007 ; Giesbrecht & Merckelbach, 2009 ; McNally, Metzger, Lasko, Clancy, & Pitman, 1998 ). In recent research, Patihis and Place (2018) found only weak evidence supporting the hypothesis that traumatized and dissociated individuals would forget trauma-related words; only one of eight hypotheses predicted support for differential motivated forgetting. Patihis and Place (2018) pointed out the high number of “degrees of freedom” available to researchers to choose comparisons in such directed-forgetting experiments. As they noted:

Within a given data set, researchers can attempt to demonstrate differential forgetting between the To Be Remembered lists and the To Be Forgotten lists. If that fails they can compare trauma to positive or neutral words. If that fails they can look for statistical significance in several interactions—and they can make all these comparisons with a number of categorisations: on dissociation, trauma, diagnosis, acute stress, which all provide additional degrees of freedom. Given the number of possible combinations, a motivated researcher will likely be able to find one comparison that might be interpreted as motivated forgetting. (p. 630)

Even if this paradigm could consistently reveal that trauma words are remembered less well by dissociated individuals, it would not be evidence that a trauma can be stored and become both inaccessible and ultimately retrievable with accuracy. Furthermore, there is work showing that even directed forgetting of autobiographical memories is not significantly related to the emotional valence of these memories, a finding that runs counter to the expectation that trauma should lead to a distinctive repression effect on memory ( Barnier et al., 2007 ). Despite many assertions in the literature to the contrary, directed-forgetting research provides no compelling evidence for repressed memories or dissociative amnesia. On a more general note, researchers have noted that the memory-impairing effects of directed forgetting may be due to a lack of rehearsal, thereby negating the need to invoke repressed memories ( Roediger & Crowder, 1972 ).

In addition, researchers have heralded the statistical correlation between trauma and dissociative symptoms as support for a general theory that trauma can lead to dissociative amnesia (see Dalenberg et al., 2012 , 2014 ; but see Lynn et al., 2014 ). However, even if this relation is strong—typically it is not (see Patihis & Lynn, 2017 )—this does not establish evidence for dissociative amnesia. Dissociation, as measured by the widely used DES, assesses feelings of depersonalization, derealization, and memory problems. These symptoms are not unlikely correlates of being traumatized or stressed for a period of time. Nevertheless, the DES does not assess dissociative amnesia as it is defined in the DSM–5 , despite the use of the word “dissociative.” Specifically, the dissociative-amnesia subscale of the DES (e.g., Stockdale, Gridley, Balogh, & Holtgraves, 2002 ) contains items such as “finding oneself in a place, but unaware how one got there,” “finding oneself dressed up in clothes one can’t remember putting on,” “finding unfamiliar things among one’s belongings,” “not recognizing friends or family members,” and “no memory of some important personal events (e.g., graduation)” ( E. M. Bernstein & Putnam, 1986 ; pp. 733–734). These items do not describe dissociative amnesia and do not assess reactions to trauma and stored yet inaccessible memories. Rather, they might reflect poor attentive control and commonplace cognitive failures. Indeed, studies have found that in undergraduate samples, scores on the amnesia items of the DES correlate positively and significantly with a measure of poor attentive control—that is, cognitive failures ( Merckelbach, Muris, & Rassin, 1999 : Study 1, r = .49; Study 2, r = .36; see also Merckelbach et al., 2000); for replication in nonclinical groups, see Bruce, Ray, and Carlson (2007 : r = .31–.46).

The picture we have so far does not imply that dissociation is unrelated to memory. Our position is that trauma can sometimes lead to feelings of depersonalization and that, probably because of accompanying stress levels, memory problems might arise. However, this position does not favor the existence of dissociative amnesia, which implies that memories of entire autobiographical experiences have been temporarily inaccessible and can later be completely and accurately recovered (see also Patihis et al., 2019 ). It is true that some earlier studies (e.g., Eich, Macaulay, Loewenstein, & Dihle, 1997 ) found suggestive evidence for interidentity amnesia in patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID). However, a more recent series of studies by Huntjens and colleagues demonstrated the importance of distinguishing between what people subjectively report about their memory loss and (the absence of) objective manifestations of such loss. Huntjens, Verschuere, and McNally (2012) assessed the transfer of information between personality states in patients with a diagnosis of DID. Both tests of explicit and implicit memory were included, as well as neutral, emotional, and autobiographical information. The data across studies were consistent in that, subjectively, DID patients reported amnesia between their personality states, but objectively, no evidence emerged for interidentity amnesia (e.g., Dorahy & Huntjens, 2007 ; Huntjens et al., 2012 ).

Psychotherapeutic Techniques, Memory Distortions, and Other Side Effects

We now consider the role of therapy in the emergence of repressed memories. We discuss research on how often therapists suggest to clients that they might have repressed memories, the effects of therapy on (false) memory, and the link between psychopathology and (false) memory recovery.

Reports of recovered memories in therapy

We have shown that a large percentage of clinical psychologists continue to believe that repressed memories might occur when people are faced with trauma. A pivotal point here is to know whether such beliefs bear any ramifications in therapeutic contexts. Patihis and Pendergrast (2019) surveyed 2,326 U.S. citizens about memory recovery in psychotherapy. Nine percent ( n = 217) of the sample reported that their therapists had discussed the possibility that they (the client) had repressed memories of childhood abuse. Furthermore, those participants were 20 times more likely to report recovering memories of abuse in therapy (that they were unaware of before therapy) than participants whose therapists did not discuss the possibility of repressed memories. Five percent ( n = 122) of the public sample reported that in the course of therapy, they had memories of being abused, of which they had no previous memory. Therapists who reported recovering memories engaged in a wide range of therapies, from attachment therapy to cognitive-behavioral therapy. In most therapy types, participants indicated a minority of therapists had discussed the possibility of repressed memories. For some therapies that involve working through past trauma, this occurred more frequently (e.g., attachment therapy, EMDR).

The study by Patihis and Pendergrast (2019) concerned recovered memories in the United States; however, Shaw, Leonte, Ball, and Felstead (2017) examined the frequency of repressed and recovered memories in the United Kingdom. They analyzed cases from the British False Memory Society, which is a charity that supports individuals claiming to have been falsely accused of a crime on the basis of a false memory. The society database contains more than 2,500 cases since 1993. The researchers selected a random sample from the database and found that 84.3% ( n = 153) of daughters accusing fathers were said to have undergone a form of therapy ranging from standard psychotherapy to hypnosis. Furthermore, Shaw and Vredeveldt (2019) noted that the Dutch equivalent of the British False Memory Society, the Fictitious Memory Group, received 13 new possible false-memory cases from 2011 and 2018. Importantly, in 77% ( n = 10) of these cases, alleged victims underwent some form of therapeutic intervention (e.g., EMDR, reincarnation therapy).

In Germany, a similar false-memory group called False Memory Deutschland (2019) maintains an archive containing cases of individuals claiming to have been falsely accused on the basis of recovered memories of sexual abuse. This group states on its website that at the time of the accusations, 83% ( n = 81) of alleged victims had been receiving psychotherapy. Even more interesting, the number of accusations has increased since 2002. All in all, reports of repressed memories in therapy occur on a nontrivial scale and can be found in many different countries. Of course, here too, the data should be interpreted with caution because selection biases might play a role. Still, the data provide additional evidence that the issue of repressed memories has not disappeared, and there are even some indications that that it has made a resurgence, at least in some areas (see also below).

Therapy and side effects

One of the most important hypotheses underlying the memory wars was that during psychological treatment, some therapists suggested to clients that they had repressed a memory of trauma, which might have engendered false memories. Although experimental work has confirmed that suggestive questions can elicit false memories ( Scoboria et al., 2017 ), a paucity of systematic research exists on how therapy shapes memory. Goodman, Goldfarb, Quas, and Lyon (2017) investigated whether therapy during a child sexual-abuse prosecution predicted memory consistency (10–16 years later). Interestingly, the authors found that therapy use positively correlated with memory consistency. Specifically, alleged victims who received therapy during or shortly after the prosecution were more likely to correctly remember abuse-related details (e.g., name of the perpetrator, perpetrators’ age) than those who did not. The use of nonsuggestive psychotherapy may aid memory consistency rather than hinder it. However, consistent remembering is not the same as accurate remembering ( Smeets, Candel, & Merckelbach, 2004 ; Talarico & Rubin, 2003 ).

Nevertheless, Goodman et al. (2017) did not specifically assess whether the type of therapy used was related to memory accuracy, and no causal conclusions concerning the effect of therapy on memory accuracy could be drawn from their study. Establishing a causal relation is important because some therapies, such as EMDR and psychoanalytic therapies, rely on patients retrieving specific autobiographical memories, and hence there might an increased risk of false memories. Furthermore, an important issue is whether certain therapies might increase people’s proneness to acquiesce with suggestions and form false memories. Indeed, Goodman et al. (2017) argued that “a study using an experimental design with random assignment to groups to investigate the effects of therapeutic intervention on true and false memory for traumatic events would be a welcome contribution to this important field of study” (p. 929). Houben, Otgaar, Roelofs, and Merckelbach (2018) addressed this issue by examining the effect of eye movements as provided in EMDR on false-memory formation (i.e., reporting of misinformation). Participants who received eye-movement treatments were more susceptible to creating false memories than participants who did not receive eye-movement treatments. Presumably, eye movements degraded memory, which might make people more susceptible to accept external misleading information—which could result in false memories (but see also van Schie & Leer, 2019 ). So, although eye movements as in EMDR may improve memory retrieval (e.g., Lyle, 2018 ), they might also increase people’s willingness to accept external suggestions.

In addition to focusing on the effects of therapy on memory performance, it is imperative to examine unwanted side effects of psychotherapy as reported by the therapists and patients themselves. Although this work is limited, research has shown that psychotherapy can in some cases engender negative side effects ( Lilienfeld, 2007 ; Merckelbach, Houben, Dandachi-Fitzgerald, Otgaar, & Roelofs, 2018 ; Rozental et al., 2018 ). Of special interest are studies that examined the relation between therapy and memory. For example, Rozental, Kottorp, Boettcher, Andersson, and Carlbring (2016) surveyed participants who had been in treatment for social anxiety and found that the most frequently endorsed side effect of treatment was “unpleasant memories resurfaced” ( n = 251; 38%).

Especially relevant are studies examining what happened after clients recovered memories via therapy. Fetkewicz, Sharma, and Merskey (2000) noted that suicide attempts increased after patients received recovered-memory therapy, although the absence of a comparison group of patients who did not receive such interventions mitigates their conclusions. Loftus (1997) observed a similar pattern with patients who received compensation after recovering memories in therapy. Before memory recovery, 3 patients (10%) reported thinking about committing suicide, whereas after recovery 20 patients (67%) reported being suicidal. Of course, it cannot be concluded that this specific therapy caused these suicide attempts or feelings, but it is concerning that patients can become more symptomatic after such therapeutic interventions. Collectively, research on the negative side effects of therapy, although limited in quantity, suggests that negative effects of therapy may not be negligible and that memory recovery may play a role in deterioration.

Psychopathology and false memory

Another way to examine the role of therapy in the reported unearthing of repressed memories is to determine whether people with some form of psychopathology are at higher risk for false memories than are people without psychopathology. This information is vital because people might seek an explanation for their disorder in therapy (cf. “effort after meaning,” Bartlett, 1932 ), and therapists might actively search for such explanations in patients’ memories and thereby create a springboard for false memories. Authors have voiced differing opinions with regard to the relation between psychopathology and false-memory generation. For example, Bookbinder and Brainerd (2016) stated that “with respect to PTSD especially, available data do not provide a consistent picture of false memory effects” (p. 1345). In contrast, Scoboria et al. (2017) opined that “people struggling with psychopathology who seek help for their symptoms may be particularly vulnerable to suggestions” (p. 160).

Otgaar, Muris, Howe, and Merckelbach (2017) recently reviewed the body of empirical work related to psychopathology and false-memory creation. Specifically, they focused on false-memory effects in people with PTSD, depression, and a history of trauma and found that in most of these studies, researchers used the Deese/Roediger-McDermott (DRM) false-memory paradigm ( Deese, 1959 ; Roediger & McDermott, 1995 ). In this paradigm, participants receive word lists containing associatively related words (e.g., night, pillow, moon ). During recall and recognition tasks, participants frequently misremember a related but not presented word called the critical lure (in this case, sleep ). Otgaar, Muris, et al. (2017) also included experiments that relied on emotionally charged word lists related to some aspects of the participants’ psychopathology. For example, for patients with depression, lists could be used that focused on the word sad . The general finding from the review was that people with PTSD, depression, or a history of trauma were at increased risk of forming false memories when they received word lists linked to their symptoms (see also Howe & Malone, 2011 ). There is good evidence that certain forms of psychopathology (e.g., schizophrenia) go hand in hand with a tendency to accept and give in to external pressure ( Peters, Moritz, Tekin, Jelicic, & Merckelbach, 2012 ). More importantly, existing work also indicates that psychopathology (i.e., depression, PTSD) is linked to an enhanced propensity to produce spontaneous false memories.

The implications of this review should be drawn with care, however, because spontaneous false memories as induced by the DRM paradigm are typically weakly related or even unrelated to false memories induced by suggestion (e.g., D. M. Bernstein, Scoboria, Desjarlais, & Soucie, 2018 ; Calado, Otgaar, & Muris, 2019 ; Nichols & Loftus, 2019 ; Ost et al., 2013 ; Otgaar & Candel, 2011 ; Patihis, Frenda, & Loftus, 2018 ; Zhu, Chen, Loftus, Lin, & Dong, 2013 ). So, although psychopathology seems to be related to an increased vulnerability for spontaneous false-memory production, this does not necessarily imply that it is also linked to an increased susceptibility to suggestion-induced false memories.

The Creation of Implanted False Memories

Many battles of the memory wars revolved around the issue of therapists who informed patients that they had repressed memories of childhood. The fact that some therapists suggested to patients that they had been sexually abused raised concerns regarding false memories in psychotherapy ( Loftus, 1994 ) as well as whether suggestive therapeutic interventions could fuel false-memory formation. Focusing on cases in which recovered memories surfaced, researchers began to examine the conditions, such as the types of events suggested, under which false events could be inadvertently implanted in memory. Specifically, a question that was addressed was whether false events could be implanted and whether even emotionally negative false memories could be formed.

False events and implanted false memories

Researchers have used the false-memory-implantation paradigm to demonstrate that entire events, ranging from positive (e.g., a birthday party) to negative (e.g., getting lost in a shopping mall), can be implanted. In the false-memory-implantation paradigm ( Loftus & Pickrell, 1995 ), participants are asked what they can remember about a true experienced event and a false event. Participants are (falsely) told that their parents confirmed that these events were experienced by the participants. During multiple suggestive interviews, about 30% of participants claim to remember the false event ( Scoboria et al., 2017 ). Studies that have successfully implanted negative events bear special relevance to the claim that recovered memories of abuse may be instances of rich false memories.

For example, Hyman et al. (1995) found in their implantation study that at the second suggestive interview 10% ( n = 2) of their subjects falsely remembered that they spent a night at the hospital because of a high fever and an ear infection. Loftus and Pickrell (1995) showed that 25% ( n = 6) of their sample created false memories of being lost in a shopping mall. Porter, Yuille, and Lehman (1999) implanted several negative events (i.e., getting lost, serious medical procedure, getting seriously hurt by a child, animal attack, indoor accident), and percentages of implantation ranged from 16.7% ( n = 3; getting lost) to 36.8% ( n = 7; animal attack). Shaw and Porter (2015) found that 70% ( n = 21) of participants formed false memories of committing a crime (but see Wade, Garry, & Pezdek, 2018 , who used another scoring method and reported that only 26% to 30% of Shaw and Porter’s subjects formed false memories).

Of course, the events that have been implanted in experimental studies on false memories differ in various ways from recollected events in real cases (e.g., sexual abuse), which almost always involve feelings of shame and taboo ( Goodman, Quas, & Ogle, 2010 ). Indeed, when Pezdek, Finger, and Hodge (1997) attempted to implant an experience of a rectal enema in adult participants, none of them fell prey to the suggestion. However, this is not to say that such events cannot be implanted in memory. Otgaar, Candel, Scoboria, and Merckelbach (2010) found that during the second interview, six children (10%) falsely reported having received a rectal enema (see also Hart & Schooler, 2006 ). Furthermore, in general, research suggests that negative events are more likely to be misremembered than are more mundane events (e.g., Otgaar, Candel, & Merckelbach, 2008 ; Porter, Taylor, & ten Brinke, 2008 ). This finding has been explained by the fact that because emotionally negative memories contain a high level of connectivity with other memories, it is relatively easy to activate and then remember events that were not experienced but related to the experienced event (e.g., Bookbinder & Brainerd, 2016 ; Otgaar, Merckelbach, et al., 2017 ).

Although one could argue that the type of events implanted in false-memory research do not match events of interest in legal cases, in false-memory-implantation studies, participants are generally interviewed two or three times in a suggestive fashion, whereas legal cases often drive home the point that people with false memories received suggestive interviews by therapists over the course of years ( Maran, 2010 ; van Til, 1997 ). It seems safe to assume that with enough suggestive pressure, even extreme negative events may be implantable in memory.

Estimating the prevalence of false-memory implantation

Researchers have tried to estimate the percentage of individuals who develop false autobiographical memories in the laboratory. Such experiments have mainly involved healthy undergraduate students who are confronted with suggestive information, after which their memory reports are evaluated for indications of accepting false information. Attempting to come up with an accurate estimate is, however, a daunting task because studies differ in terms of coding and criteria for defining a report of false memory. Brewin and Andrews (2017) reviewed false-memory-implantation studies and concluded that in 15% of the recollective experiences induced by the implantation method, statements were rated as full-blown false memories. They argued that this statistic shows that “susceptibility to false memories of childhood events appears more limited than has been suggested” (p. 2).

Nevertheless, the review by Brewin and Andrews (2017) has been criticized (for a critical analysis, see Otgaar, Merckelbach, et al., 2017 ). First, as mentioned previously, the coding of false memories varied among false-memory-implantation studies. Therefore, Scoboria et al. (2017) devised a new coding system based on theories concerning remembering (e.g., Brewer, 1996 ; Conway & Pleydell-Pearce, 2000 ; Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993 ; Rubin, 2006 ). Using this system, they recoded transcripts from eight published false-memory-implantation studies. Overall, they found that 30.4% of transcripts were coded as false memories, which is twice the percentage that Brewin and Andrews (2017) reported. In addition, in the analysis by Scoboria et al., an additional 23% of cases were coded as having accepted the false event to some extent.

Second, Otgaar, Merckelbach, et al. (2017) reviewed 15 false-memory laboratory studies that investigated the confidence that participants place in their false memories. The data revealed a mean confidence rating of 74%, with an unweighted 95% confidence interval = [0.66, 0.78]. 3 Furthermore, in 93% ( k = 14) of the studies, false-memory reports had confidence ratings exceeding the midpoint of the rating scale. Clearly, confidence is often high in implanted false memories.

Third, even if we accept the highly conservative 15% as a fair estimate of overall false-memory potential, this percentage still points to a significant problem in legal and therapeutic settings. It means that if a therapist using suggestive prompts consulted with 100 patients, on average, 15 of them might develop illusory autobiographical memories of, for example, sexual abuse, and some might falsely accuse an innocent person because of this memory ( Nash, Wade, Garry, Loftus, & Ost, 2017 ; see also Smeets, Merckelbach, Jelicic, & Otgaar, 2017 ).

Memory Wars in the Courtroom and Beyond

We have reviewed several lines of evidence showing that the topic of repressed memories continues to be popular although scientifically controversial among psychologists and psychiatrists. We now examine the role of repressed memories and dissociative amnesia in legal cases and the persistence of naive memory beliefs in the courtroom.

Repressed memories and dissociative amnesia in the courtroom

In 2017, a French ministerial report was published proposing to increase the statute of limitations for prosecuting sexual abuse from 20 to 30 years ( Flament & Calmettes, 2017 ). The reason given was that because victims often delay disclosing their abusive experience (e.g., Goodman-Brown, Edelstein, Goodman, Jones, & Gordon, 2003 ; see also Connolly & Read, 2006 ), they are still entitled to have their day in court. However, a more controversial reason for increasing the statute of limitations given in the report was that traumatic experiences of abuse could lead to dissociative amnesia ( Dodier & Thomas, 2019 ). Dodier and Thomas rightly noted that the use of such a controversial term in an official governmental report might lead people with a history of trauma to believe that their traumatic memories are atypical and that to uncover additional memories they should rely on methods such as recovered memory therapy that might result in false memories. Admittedly, victims might take many years to disclose their traumatic experiences, but as noted before, there are more plausible explanations than dissociative amnesia for the delay in reporting the abuse, such as feeling ashamed of the trauma and reinterpreting the experience as abusive (e.g., Goodman-Brown et al., 2003 ; Schooler, 2001 ). This issue of delayed disclosure is especially relevant to stress, as there is currently much attention regarding historic sexual abuse cases, such as those that emerged in the #MeToo discussion, of which the overwhelming majority has nothing to do with memory repression or recovery (see also Goodman et al., 2017 ).

There is also evidence of recovered memories entering into some cases in the United Kingdom. The UK Advocate’s Gateway (2015) document on trauma explains to lawyers how to approach traumatized witnesses and victims. It stipulates that dissociative amnesia is possible and argues that “Trauma disrupts the left hemisphere function of the brain. . . . This disruption affects the ability to give a verbal narrative. . . . The right hemisphere of the brain stores implicit or sensory associated memories” (p. 5). This is questionable advice, with some potentially unsupported and pseudoscientific ideas mixed into the document.

An alternative way to examine whether the issue of repressed memories and dissociative amnesia is still prominent in the legal arena is to examine court proceedings and investigate the number of cases in which repressed memories played a role. In the Netherlands, an online database of court rulings ( http://www.rechtspraak.nl ) exists in which one can search for key terms in a diverse set of cases. The database is not exhaustive in that it only lists the most prominent court rulings. We used the search term verdringing (“repression”) and investigated criminal trials from 1990 to 2018 in which repressed memories were mentioned. Figure 1 demonstrates that cases in which this term was used referring to cases on repressed memories have increased over the past years. When a similar exercise was performed using the search term hervonden herinnering (“recovered memory”), a similar pattern emerged. Moreover, when we used the term dissociatieve amnesia (“dissociative amnesia”), again, we found that this term is on the rise. 4

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 10.1177_1745691619862306-fig1.jpg

Number of Dutch legal cases mentioning repression, recovered memory, or dissociative memory from 1990 to 2018.

Caution should be exerted when interpreting these data. First, it is remarkable that virtually no legal cases were found on repression and recovered memory from 1990 to 2000. One reason might be that such older cases are not represented in this database. Second, although issues such as repressed and recovered memories were discussed in these criminal trials summarized by pertinent court rulings thereafter, judges did not necessarily accept these notions uncritically. Nonetheless, these data demonstrate that, at least in the Netherlands, legal professionals still use the Freudian and neo-Freudian nomenclature of repression and dissociative amnesia.

Memory beliefs in the courtroom

Although we have discussed naive beliefs about memory across a variety of lay and professional populations, these beliefs can be especially problematic in the courtroom. Because judicial outcomes may be influenced by the naive beliefs about memory that triers of fact harbor, it is critical that when testimony consists mainly of memory evidence (e.g., remembering event details, identifying the perpetrator), actors in the legal domain possess a scientifically informed view of how memory works.

To appreciate how the disconnect between the science of memory and the beliefs held by individuals in the legal arena can lead to unsafe convictions, one can examine the cases listed on the Innocence Project websites in the United States ( http://www.innocenceproject.org ) and the United Kingdom ( http://www.innocencenetwork.org.uk ). The most common factor in these false convictions has been faulty memory evidence (i.e., incorrect eyewitness identifications are implicated in more than 70% of cases). Police and prosecutors apparently made decisions about this memory evidence perhaps without exactly understanding the science of how memory works and often because other more objective evidence was lacking (for reviews, see Howe & Knott, 2015 ; Howe, Knott, & Conway, 2018 ).

Judges and prosecutors alike differ as to whether they will accept expert memory testimony. For example, in a Dutch revision case in which dissociative memories of abuse were the central issue, one senior prosecutor opined that in contrast to DNA experts, psychological experts do not aid judges in helping them to understand the intricacies of statements by witnesses or defendants ( https://uitspraken.rechtspraak.nl/inziendocument?id=ECLI:NL:PHR:2015:2769 ). He added that the field of legal psychology is known for its lack of consensus and for its high degree of subjectivity, which is hyperbolic when one looks at the generally broad consensus on a range of topics found in surveys among legal psychologists ( Kassin, Redlich, Alceste, & Luke, 2018 ; Kassin et al., 2001 ). Furthermore, research clearly indicates that judges routinely overestimate jurors’ ability to understand and correctly use memory evidence when in fact it is based solely on their “common sense”—such as that memory works like a video camera (e.g., Houston, Hope, Memon, & Read, 2013 ; Magnussen et al., 2010 ); for the Scooter Libby effect, see also Kassam, Gilbert, Swencionis, & Wilson, 2009 ).

The question of whether jurors’ commonsense views of memory in court are adequate also extends to cases in which adults are recollecting events that happened decades earlier in childhood. As elsewhere, it is not a given that judges will necessarily accept scientific expert testimony about memory in their courtroom to counteract the commonsense views held by jurors and others involved in the judicial system. Progress has been made in some U.S. states in which judges in trials involving eyewitness identification must now present jurors with cautions about the reliability of such evidence before their deliberation ( State of New Jersey v. Henderson , 2011 ). In Pennsylvania, Loftus, Francis, and Turgeon (2012) drafted jury instructions that addressed issues concerning a broad spectrum of expert memory testimony. Likewise, in the United Kingdom, judges are now obligated to give juries so-called Turnbull guidelines in the cases that heavily rely on eyewitness identification ( Trevelyan, n.d. ). Admittedly, these are but a few recent examples, and much more research needs to be conducted to counteract the impact of erroneous lay beliefs about memory in the courtroom.

Furthermore, it is also imperative that such guidelines are not fixed but are provisional and can be updated any time. Guidelines are ideally based on the current corpus of scientific findings, but new findings might warrant amendments. For example, previous research has suggested that the confidence that eyewitnesses place in their identification is only weakly related to their accuracy. In contrast, recent research has demonstrated that under optimal conditions, confidence is strongly predictive of accuracy ( Sauerland & Sporer, 2009 ; Wixted & Wells, 2017 ). It is important to be cognizant about such new developments.

Memory wars in the scientific literature

One might posit that although the controversial issue of repressed memories is still relevant in clinical and legal contexts, the debate concerning repressed memories is now muted in the scientific literature. There are two indications that this is not the case. First, in a recent bibliometric analysis, Dodier (2019) examined the number of publications and citations regarding repressed and recovered memories from 2001 to 2018. The author found that proponents and opponents of repressed memories have continued to publish articles about repressed and recovered memories throughout the time period. Notably, these articles were cited just as often as articles published during the presumed heyday of the memory wars in the 1990s. In addition, the year 2018 witnessed an increase in publications on this topic. This increase was characterized by a mix of articles in favor or against the concept of repressed memories. Specifically, of the 16 articles in 2018, 5 (31%) were largely or entirely in favor of the existence of repressed memories, whereas 9 (56%) articles expressed skepticism regarding the existence of repressed memories (two articles adopted a neutral position).

Second, the debate over repressed memories and dissociative amnesia has hardly vanished from the scientific literature. For example, Brand, Schielke, and Brams (2017) and Brand, Schielke, Brams, and DiComo (2017) recently tried to provide legal professionals with evidence-based knowledge on trauma-related dissociation and concomitant effects such as dissociative amnesia. Their articles provoked a disagreement between them and memory researchers who argued that their conclusions were not based on evidence and potentially hazardous ( Brand et al., 2018 ; Merckelbach & Patihis, 2018 ; Patihis et al., 2019 ). Debates relating to the issue of dissociative amnesia, repressed memories, or both, are clearly alive and well in the scientific literature (see also Staniloiu & Markowitsch, 2014 ).

The claims of some authors to the contrary, the controversial topic of repressed memories and dissociative amnesia continues to be very much alive in clinical, legal, and academic contexts. Converging lines of evidence suggest that concerns regarding the widespread belief in repressed memories are far from having been resolved following the memory wars of the 1990s. Across many different professionals (e.g., psychotherapists), the percentage who believe in repressed memories remains high, generally above 50%. Furthermore, the idea of repressed memories has merely become popular under a different name—dissociative amnesia—which shares many characteristics with repressed memory and that carries the added cachet of being associated with the DSM–5 ( American Psychiatric Association, 2013 ). In addition, research points to the possibility that some therapeutic techniques exert adverse effects by potentially increasing the likelihood of false memories. Finally, questions of repressed memories continue to be addressed in the courtroom and in the scientific literature. Taken together, these different threads of evidence imply that falsely recovered memories of abuse continue to pose a substantial risk in therapeutic settings, potentially leading to false accusations and associated miscarriages of justice.

A relevant question is how flawed ideas regarding the functioning of memory could be corrected. That unconscious repressed memory is still accepted with little qualification and remains popular among many mental-health professionals can be explained in part by the now well-replicated finding that it is typically difficult to correct erroneous beliefs. Specifically, when people are confronted with any form of misinformation (e.g., fake news), correcting such errors is challenging, a phenomenon referred to as the continued-influence effect ( Lewandowsky, Ecker, Seifert, Schwarz, & Cook, 2012 ; see also Lilienfeld, Marshall, Todd, & Shane, 2014 ) or belief perseverance ( C. A. Anderson, Lepper, & Ross, 1980 ). However, recent studies suggest that informing people that their firmly held beliefs are incorrect (“prebunking”), and even providing them with the correct alternative information (debunking), can often be effective in correcting these beliefs (e.g., Blank & Launay, 2014 ; Crozier & Strange, 2019 ). In addition to applying these provisional but promising methods, it is crucially important to educate individuals, especially legal professionals and clinicians, about the science of memory. This effort is all the more essential given that these professionals are often in close contact with victims, patients, witnesses, and suspects. Such interactions are a prime opportunity for inadvertent memory contamination. Increasing their awareness of potentially harmful beliefs about repressed memories should therefore be a priority in clinical and legal work as well as for psychological scientists at large.

1. We use the term false memory in this article to refer to the remembrance of events/details that did not occur (e.g., Loftus, 2005 ).

2. On the website of the Journal of Trauma & Dissociation , we looked for articles using the search term “dissociative amnesia” from January 2010 to May 2019 and from January 1990 to May 1999.

3. In the reviewed studies, confidence was measured using different rating scales (e.g., 1–5, 1–10, 50–100).

4. We explored whether the rise of these terms is also evident when controlling for the total number of cases in the Dutch legal database. From 2001 to 2010, there were a total of 192,345 cases, and from 2011 to 2018 there were a total of 267,377 cases. Even if these base rates were taken into account, we found that the terms recovered memory (9 × 10 −5 to 1.2 × 10 −4 ) and dissociative amnesia (7 × 10 −5 to 1 × 10 −4 ) increased from 2001 to 2010 to 2011 to 2018.

Action Editor: Laura A. King served as action editor for this article.

An external file that holds a picture, illustration, etc.
Object name is 10.1177_1745691619862306-img1.jpg

Declaration of Conflicting Interests: The author(s) declared that there were no conflicts of interest with respect to the authorship or the publication of this article.

Nvidia supplier SK Hynix expects full chip recovery after strong earnings on AI boom

Medium Text

Highest profit since Q2 2022
2024 capex bigger than expected on HBM investments
AI data centres buying eSSDs for efficient data storage

Reporting by Joyce Lee and Heekyong Yang; Editing by Kim Coghill, Sonali Paul and Tom Hogue

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles. New Tab , opens new tab

Tesla CEO Musk attends a conference organized by the European Jewish Association, in Krakow

Technology Chevron

U.s. chip bans not meant to hobble china's growth, blinken says.

U.S. export controls on sending advanced computing chips to China are not meant to hold back China's economy or technological development, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said during an interview with National Public Radio on Friday.

International

April 23, 2024 - Israel-Hamas war

By Sana Noor Haq, Christian Edwards, Tori B. Powell and Aditi Sangal, CNN

Our live coverage of Israel's war on Hamas in Gaza has moved here .

US Senate passes $95 billion package that includes aid for Israel and other countries after months of delay

From CNN's Kristin Wilson and Sam Fossum

The Senate votes on final passage of the supplemental spending bill for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan and humanitarian efforts.

The US Senate passed, with wide bipartisan support, a $95 billion foreign aid package Tuesday night which includes aid for countries including Israel.

The legislation ties together four bills that the House voted on separately in a rare Saturday session, providing over $26 billion for Israel, nearly $61 billion in aid for Ukraine and more than $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific.

The final vote was 79-18. Fifteen Republicans voted with three Democrats against the bill, while 48 Democrats and 31 Republicans voted for the bill.

It will now be sent to be signed by President Joe Biden, who applauded the package's passage on Tuesday and said that he will sign the legislation on Wednesday.

“This critical legislation will make our nation and world more secure as we support our friends who are defending themselves against terrorists like Hamas and tyrants like Putin,” Biden said in a written statement.

The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. Here's what you should know

From CNN staff

Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed at least 34,183 people after 200 days of war, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The Government Media Office in Gaza said that, over the past 200 days, 14,778 children had been killed – as had 9,752 women. The Media Office also said that 17,000 children in Gaza had lost one or both parents.

Here are other headlines you should know:

Developments on the ground: The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) issued a warning to people in parts of the area of Beit Lahia in northern Gaza to evacuate and relocate to shelters in other parts of the enclave. The Israeli military and journalists in Gaza reported extensive strikes overnight in several parts of the territory. Also, Israeli air strikes demolished the top three floors of the Al-Sahaba building in Gaza City, in the northern part of the enclave, Monday. The IDF also said it had “ successfully intercepted two suspicious aerial targets off the northern coast.” Elsewhere, Abu Obaida, the spokesperson of the Hamas military wing Al Qassam Brigades, urged continued attacks on Israel in his first video message in more than six weeks on Tuesday, marking 200 days of the Israel-Hamas war.
More bodies found at Khan Younis hospital: Emergency workers on Tuesday recovered at least 35 more bodies from a mass grave within the Nasser medical complex , in southern Gaza, after Israeli forces withdrew from the neighborhood earlier this month. The total number of bodies found increased to 310, Col. Yamen Abu Suleiman, the director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis, told CNN, adding that operations are ongoing.
Latest out of Lebanon: The Israeli military says it killed two members of the Iranian-backed militant group Hezbollah, in southern Lebanon. In the the southern village of Hanine in Lebanon, an Israeli airstrike targeted a house that killed at least two people and injuring six others, according to state-run media NNA.
Iranian threats: An Israeli attack on Iranian territory would have serious consequences and result in there being "nothing left" of Israel, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi said Tuesday, according to reporting from Iranian state news agency IRNA reported. The warning came after Israel on Friday carried out a military strike inside Iran, a US official told CNN, although Israel has not officially claimed the attack.
Humanitarian crisis: More than 270,000 tons of solid waste across the entire Gaza Strip remain uncollected, the UN's agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said Tuesday, as Israel's military campaign has disrupted essential services in the enclave. The agency also reported that more than 75% of the entire population across Gaza has been displaced as of April 21, that relief operations there have been “severely restricted” by Israeli authorities and that the health system in the enclave has been crushed.
Humanitarian aid: Jordan has conducted an airdrop of humanitarian and relief aid into Gaza on Tuesday, according to Jordanian state news agency Petra. Also, US military vessels are in the Mediterranean region and “standing by” and prepared to begin construction on the temporary pier off the coast of Gaza when given the order to do so, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday.

"200 days of war, it feels like 200 years." Palestinian children mourn lost dreams

From CNN’s Mohammad Al Sawalhi, Abeer Salman and Sana Noor Haq

Displaced Palestinians cook in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza.

Young children wearing sandals pucker their faces under the Gazan sun. Others drift barefoot across the courtyard of a sprawling school in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.

CNN footage shows clothes on washing lines and dusty plastic tents fluttering in the wind.

“Our lives are full of suffering, no drinking water, no livable place to stay,” says Mohammad Shabat, a displaced Palestinian. “There is no health, no education. How will these children live? How will they study? We had COVID, now we have war. We are mentally exhausted. “I am 60 years old, I lived through wars before, but we never lived through this oppression.”

Mohammad Shabat, a displaced Palestinian, speaks to CNN at a school in Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, on April 23.

Palestinians described months of forced displacement as they waited anxiously for news from relatives separated across the enclave, with no relief from Israeli strikes.

Rahaf Shabbat, a young student who was forced to flee from Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza, told CNN she was heartbroken when the war disrupted her school year. “Today marks 200 days of war, it feels like 200 years... of fear and horror, rockets, martyrs, and deaths,” she said.

Another Palestinian child, Rama Shabat, says she has not seen her loved ones for seven months. “We lost our dreams and our childhood. We miss our loved ones in the north,” Rama told CNN, as she broke down into tears.

Hala Abdan, a lawyer, said her 20-year-old son’s left foot was amputated after he was injured by a drone strike in December. “I struggle to provide him anything, just like all the Palestinian people,” she said. “It has been 200 days full of suffering that one can barely bear... 200 days of catastrophe.”

Hala Abdan, a lawyer, says Israel’s bombardment in Gaza has felt like “200 days of catastrophe.”

2 people killed in Israeli airstrike in southern Lebanon, state media says

From CNN’s Ruba Alhenawi

An Israeli airstrike on the southern village of Hanine in Lebanon targeted a house, killing at least two people and injuring six others, according to state-run media NNA.

A woman and her 11-year-old niece were killed and at least six others were wounded , NNA reported.

The incident happened on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. local time when the two-story house of Ahmad Ali Khashakesh in Hanine was struck with two rockets, according to NNA .

CNN reached out to the Israel Defense Forces for comment on the incident.

Earlier Tuesday , the IDF announced that fighter jets struck Hezbollah military positions in the area of Markaba in southern Lebanon. Also on Tuesday, the IDF said it had “successfully intercepted two suspicious aerial targets off the northern coast.”

"They erased our memories": Palestinians on 200 days of Israel's war on Hamas

From CNN’s Ibrahim Dahman and Sana Noor Haq

Smoke rises following an Israeli airstrike in Deir al-Balah, Gaza, on Tuesday, April 23.

Nirmine Moussa said her children will never get used to the sound of Israeli strikes raining down on Gaza. The Palestinian mother was left homeless after her house in the north was destroyed in the early days of the war.

“They erased our memories,” said Moussa, who is displaced in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza. “My children are not used to the sound of bombardment every second of the day. They live in a nightmare forever, after the IDF destroyed their dreams and their future, by destroying their schools and killing their friends.”

After 200 days since Israel launched its military campaign in Gaza, Palestinians who spoke to CNN by phone say they feel exhausted by a war that has wiped out families and turned once-lively neighborhoods into rubble-filled wastelands.

“Have I even survived without my father, without my house, without everything?” said Maram Faraj, 26, a writer displaced in the coastal town of Al-Mawasi. “Will I be the next genocide victim? If so, will my family be able to identify my body?”

Raed Redwan, who is in the southern city of Rafah, said he is homeless and afraid. The teacher and academic said he has been living on the streets for more than six months, with no access to electricity or running water.

“After 200 days of genocide in Gaza, I still ask why this happened? Who is responsible for continuous war in Gaza? Why did they leave us alone in this war?... There is no one able to help me, my baby, or my family,” Redwan said. “l’ve lost everything... But I still hold hope.”

Construction on temporary pier for Gaza will begin very soon, Pentagon says

From CNN's Haley Britzky

US military vessels are in the Mediterranean region and “standing by” and prepared to begin construction on the temporary pier off the coast of Gaza when given the order to do so, Pentagon spokesperson Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said Tuesday.

He also said the United States was “positioned to begin construction very soon, in the near future.”

Currently, officials are working through a checklist of processes and procedures, including security on the ground, coordination with partners supporting this effort and drawing up a timeline for implementation, Ryder said.

Ryder has said the expectation is for the temporary pier to be operational by the end of April or early May, and said Tuesday the military is on track to meet that timeline.

The World Food Programme (WFP) will support the distribution of aid from the pier following weeks of diplomatic wrangling, the organization said Saturday.

The temporary pier, which will be several miles off the coast of Gaza, will receive both military and civilian vessels, Ryder added. The aid brought by those vessels will then be transported from the pier by US military vessels to the causeway, where non-military trucks — driven by non-profit organization personnel — will take the aid and then distribute it into Gaza.

Hamas military spokesperson urges continued attacks on Israel in first video message in almost 2 months

From CNN's Ruba Alhenawi

Abu Obaida, the spokesperson of Hamas’ military wing Al Qassam Brigades, urged continued attacks on Israel in his first video message in more than six weeks on Tuesday, marking 200 days of the Israel-Hamas war.

"We will keep attacking the enemy with different techniques as long as the aggression continues on our land," Abu Obaida said. Hamas fighters would "keep coming out to fight the enemy," he added.

He also praised Iran's unprecedented strikes on Israel earlier this month, saying the attack's "size and nature, established new rules and confused the enemy's calculations." Iran launched a large-scale drone and missile attack at Israel in retaliation for a suspected Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic complex in Syria . The Israeli military said 99% of the more than 300 projectiles fired were intercepted.

Abu Obaida also slammed Israel's role in the hostage release and ceasefire negotiations, saying Israel is "trying to renounce all his promises" and wants to "gain more time." Israel and the US have blamed Hamas for holding up negotiations by making unreasonable demands.

Jordan conducts aid airdrop into Gaza

From CNN's Ibrahim Dahman

People rush to reach humanitarian aid packages dropped over northern Gaza on April 23.

Jordan has conducted an airdrop of humanitarian and relief aid into Gaza on Tuesday, according to Jordanian state news agency Petra.

The Jordanian Armed Forces conducted seven airdrops to multiple sites in northern Gaza, and said they would continue sending humanitarian and medical aid to Gaza through airdrops, ground convoys and through the Marka airport in Amman to Egypt's Al-Arish International Airport.

Jordan has conducted 87 airdrops into Gaza and took part in 209 international airdrops since October 7, according to Petra.

Petra reported that Tuesday's aid drop was conducted along with the US, Egypt and Germany.

"Focus on Gaza:" As tit-for-tat strikes between Israel and Iran appear to have concluded, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi told CNN, "The focus should remain on Gaza," as the strip edges towards famine.

Please enable JavaScript for a better experience.

IMAGES

To Improve Memory Free Essay Example
Memory essay planning
PPT
An essay on memory tricks
Admission of a recovered memory in a court case Essay Example
⚡ My best memory essay. Memories Essay: Writing Guide Plus 30 Best

VIDEO

Memory Test || Riddles And Puzzles For lq Test || part 3 || #shorts #quiztime
Memory Test || Riddles And Puzzles For lq Test || part 3 || #shorts #quiztime
Memory Test || Riddles And Puzzles For lq Test || part 3 || #shorts #quiztime
Memory Test || Riddles And Puzzles For lq Test || part 3 || #shorts #quiztime
Memories are reconstructed each time called
Memory Test || Riddles And Puzzles For lq Test || part 3 || #shorts #quiztime

COMMENTS

The Forgotten Lessons of the Recovered Memory Movement
What happened during recovered memory therapy sessions is no mystery. Therapists candidly revealed their techniques in books, conference speeches and academic papers and on daytime television talk ...
The Return of Recovered Memory
The two camps contested the validity of "repressed" and "recovered" memories of trauma, especially those elicited in sessions of evocative psychotherapy. ... Frederick Crews, an ex-Freudian literary critic who in the mid-1990s assailed recovered memory in a celebrated series of essays for the New York Review of Books, has observed these ...
The Debate Over Repressed and Recovered Memories
Debate Over Memories. There is still a fairly heated controversy in the field of psychology about whether or not repressed memories can or should be recovered, as well as whether or not they are accurate. The clearest divide appears to be between mental health practitioners and researchers. In one study, clinicians had a much greater tendency ...
What about Recovered Memory?
Recommended Review Articles about Recovered Memories. For a current summary of the evidence regarding recovered memories and known mechanisms and motivations for recovered memories, a good starting source is: Sivers, H., Schooler, J. , Freyd, J. J. (2002) Recovered memories. In V.S. Ramachandran (Ed.)
Recovered and false memories
Recovered and false memories. Daniel B. Wright, James Ost and Christopher C. French look at how the evidence has developed since the Society's working party report. 18 June 2006. In 1995 the recovered memory debate was near its most vociferous height. Hundreds of people were recovering memories of childhood sexual abuse (CSA), sometimes in ...
What about Recovered Memory?
Some papers my colleagues and I have written that focus on the issues of recovered memories and the ethics in the science surrounding the topic are ... True and False Recovered Memories: Toward a Reconciliation of the Debate (Nebraska Symposium on Motivation 58) (pp 193-243). New York: Springer. Two Common conceptual tangles about recovered ...
The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of
The study by Patihis and Pendergrast (2019) concerned recovered memories in the United States; however, Shaw, Leonte, Ball, and Felstead (2017) examined the frequency of repressed and recovered memories in the United Kingdom. They analyzed cases from the British False Memory Society, which is a charity that supports individuals claiming to have ...
Retrieving and Modifying Traumatic Memories: Recent Research Relevant
The purpose of this article is to review recent research that is relevant to three controversies concerning memory for trauma. First, we briefly review the debate about recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, summarizing a third interpretation distinct from both the repression and false-memory accounts.
The Forgotten Lessons of the Recovered Memory Movement
The Forgotten Lessons of the Recovered Memory Movement. September 28, 2022. Most students in psychology and psychiatry programs today are too young to have any firsthand memory of the moral panic engendered by the recovered memory movement in the 1980s and early 1990s. This was a time when therapists proudly advertised their ability to help ...
The Forgotten Lessons of the Recovered Memory Movement
Beginning around 1994, criticism of recovered memory therapy slowed the movement. Critically, several feminist writers began questioning the satanic cult stories and the coercive techniques of recovered memory therapy. They all faced angry accusations of revictimizing abused women. But the evidence for the harm done in therapy continued to pile up.
More Questions About Recovered Memories
More Questions About Recovered Memories. A recent article (1) purported to "provide further evidence supporting the occurrence of amnesia for childhood traumatic experiences and the subsequent recovery of memory" (p. 754). In a key but methodologically problematic finding, " [a] majority of participants were able to find strong ...
Memory, amnesia, and the issue of recovered memory
Abstract. The main thesis of this article is that the debate about the credibility of "recovered memories"—reports by adults of recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse and trauma that were allegedly repressed for many years—can be usefully informed by considering the biological and behavioral facts and ideas about how memory works.
The Debate on Repressed Memories
Please use one of the following formats to cite this article in your essay, paper or report: APA. Hanson-Baiden, Joelle. (2021, December 23). The Debate on Repressed Memories.
Controversy over Recovered Memories Essay (Article)
Introduction. This is a review of the article titled 'The Controversy over Recovered Memories.'. It is authored by Henry L. Roediger of Washington University, St Louis and, Erik T. Bergman of Pitney Bowes Technology Center. It involves the varied contentious issues surrounding the debate on repressed memories and their later recovery.
What science tells us about false and repressed memories
The scientific nature of false and repressed memories. The issue of how traumatic experiences are remembered is one of the most contested areas in psychology. An especially controversial aspect of this is the topic of repressed memories. Repressed memory is the idea that traumatic experiences - such as sexual abuse - can be unconsciously ...
The neurobiological foundation of memory retrieval
Abstract. Memory retrieval involves the interaction between external sensory or internally generated cues and stored memory traces (or engrams) in a process termed 'ecphory'. While ecphory has been examined in human cognitive neuroscience research, its neurobiological foundation is less understood. To the extent that ecphory involves ...
Debate on False Recovered Memories
Introduction. Proponents of the false memory theory assert that recovered memories are non-existent and that most claims are usually founded on psychotherapists' beliefs or improper research lacking in empirical, clinical or scientific evidence (Whitfield et al., 2001). Most of them believe that the use of dreamwork, harmful visualization and ...
Studies on Recovered Memory and Trauma
Studies on Recovered Memory and Trauma. Memory is one of the most controversial issues in psychology, raising questions over whether memory should be trusted as evidence in a court of law. In 1980 the DSM-III supported the existence of dissociative amnesia; a recognized inability to remember personal information that is particularly related to ...
Memory Distortion for Traumatic Events: The Role of Mental Imagery
Trauma memories - like all memories - are malleable and prone to distortion. Indeed, there is growing evidence - from both field and lab-based studies - to suggest that the memory distortion follows a particular pattern. ... particularly given their potential role in influencing people's recovery. Memory Distortion for Traumatic ...
Controversy
The controversy around recovered memory focuses on whether or not recovered memories are trustworthy. Despite evidence supporting the phenomenon of recovered memories, some people believe that it is impossible to completely forget and later recover a memory. ... The timeline serves to organize significant events, papers, conferences, news ...
Controversy of Recovered Repressed Memories Analytical Essay
The controversies associated with recovered repressed memories have elicited a lot debate. This has generated increased research on the said topic. This essay seeks to critically evaluate Susan Penfold's article, The Repressed Memory Controversy: Is There a Middle Ground, a peer reviewed article. We will write a custom essay on your topic.
Essay on Memory: (Meaning and Types)
Meaning and Nature: Memory is one of the important cognitive processes. Memory involves remembering and forgetting. These are like two faces of a coin. Though these two are opposed to each other by nature, they play an important role in the life of an individual. Remembering the pleasant experiences makes living happy, and on the other hand ...
NASA's Voyager 1 Resumes Sending Engineering Updates to Earth
The probe and its twin, Voyager 2, are the only spacecraft to ever fly in interstellar space (the space between stars). Voyager 1 stopped sending readable science and engineering data back to Earth on Nov. 14, 2023, even though mission controllers could tell the spacecraft was still receiving their commands and otherwise operating normally.
Recoding Voyager 1—NASA's interstellar explorer is finally making sense
The ground team sent a command up to Voyager 1 on Thursday to recode part of the memory of the spacecraft's Flight Data Subsystem (FDS), one of the probe's three computers.
Chipmaker SK Hynix Records Fastest Sales Growth Since 2010 on AI Memory
SK Hynix Inc. said it expects a full recovery in the memory market, led by surging AI-related demand, and lifted its capital spending plans. The leader in the high-bandwidth memory that power ...
A Dangerous Game Is Underway in Asia
Guest Essay. A Dangerous Game Is Underway in Asia. April 24, 2024. ... This month, President Biden threw one of the most lavish state dinners in Washington's recent memory. Celebrities and ...
The Return of the Repressed: The Persistent and Problematic Claims of
Repressed Memories and the Memory Wars. As Ellenberger (1970) explained in his classic monograph, the concept of repressed memories traces its roots to the psychoanalytic theory and practice of Sigmund Freud, who in turn was influenced by physician-hypnotists, such as Jean-Martin Charcot, in the final decades of the 19th century. At the heart of this concept is the idea that traumatic ...
Nvidia supplier SK Hynix expects full chip recovery after strong
The world's second-biggest memory chipmaker reported a 2.89 trillion won ($2.1 billion) operating profit for the March quarter versus a loss of 3.4 trillion won a year earlier, beating a 1.88 ...
April 23, 2024
5:41 p.m. ET, April 23, 2024. The death toll in Gaza continues to rise. Here's what you should know. From CNN staff. Israeli military operations in Gaza have killed at least 34,183 people after ...